Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Shell history
Raised as a usability problem by 9 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 7 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
Shell history makes it hard to see where commands were runUnreviewed
20112026- Commands expected in shell history are often missing, and history saving is inconsistent across terminals and crashes2025-02-16
- Standard shell history makes it hard to see where commands were run2020-05-11
- Hard to find a command in shell history among many similar ones2017-03-13
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 9 complaints
- Importing a long history file makes the shell very laggy2026-09-17
- Users must remember different keys for ordered history search and text search2026-09-16
- Editing a prior command via the editor shortcut is slower and awkward to type2026-08-13
- Requires remembering past commands accurately, which many people find difficult2026-08-12
- Feature doesn't work by default and must be checked per shell2025-07-28
- Commands expected in shell history are often missing, and history saving is inconsistent across terminals and crashes2025-02-16
- Standard shell history makes it hard to see where commands were run2020-05-11
- Hard to find a command in shell history among many similar ones2017-03-13
- Reverse search matches unexpected commands, so users must pause and verify each result2011-05-20