Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Share buttons
Raised as a usability problem by 21 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 18 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 22 complaints
- Shared links often open a web version with a popup, or lose the info, so recipients don't see what was sent2026-08-18
- Sharing takes several clicks through paginated lists of apps and poorly ordered contacts2026-08-18
- Users can't predict what a share button will do, and the copied text needs trimming2026-06-16
- Share button copies link to clipboard, forcing many steps to send the page2025-11-03
- Share menu shows irrelevant apps and offers no way to exclude them2022-11-28
- Unwanted share button on info page pushes paragraph content down on mobile2020-06-16
- Share buttons open a clumsy embedded box that only works with Facebook instead of the native share sheet2020-03-19
- Share button is unintuitive for users2019-08-05
- Info icon in share area is unclear; share menu hidden behind a return icon2017-04-06
- Social share bar covers the left text and is hard to dismiss or minimize2016-12-07
- Page is impossible to parse; users must visit the main site to understand it2016-06-08
- Sharing buttons are frustrating and don't work well2016-06-04
- Share icon (box with up arrow) isn't intuitive; users must learn its meaning2014-06-12
- Generic share icon doesn't reveal which service a user is posting to2014-06-12
- Users can't tell what sharing will do, since email, social posts and folder sharing differ2014-06-11
- Icons show the channel rather than the action, so users can't tell what clicking will do2014-06-11
- A button pops up whenever the reader selects text, interrupting reading2013-11-24
- Users struggle to notice, select, copy and paste share links2013-07-01
- Share button experience is terrible and inconsistent, so users copy and paste links instead2013-03-13
- Fixed floating share bar looks more important than content and must be hidden to read2012-05-27
- Constantly moving share counter distracts the eye and stays fixed while scrolling, making the page hard to read2012-03-30
- Email sharing is buried alphabetically in the share popup, hard to find2011-12-12