Shortcuts app

Raised as a usability problem by 19 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 21 threads.

People raised many different problems with Shortcuts app, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

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

Tapping app-suggested shortcuts like Starbucks' usual order succeeds less than half the time2026-05-01
Visual scripting combines worst parts of scripting and visual languages, hard to use2026-01-08
Settings app is confusing and poorly explained for users2025-10-24
Hard to build workflows; must add dummy blocks to fill the screen2025-09-02
Shortcuts on desktop is limited, and tasks require roundabout approaches2025-03-17
SSH action hangs and is too buggy for scripting, forcing painful repetitive setups2024-11-15
Screen becomes semi-unresponsive during upload on less powerful iPhones, so the Stop button can't be used2024-06-11
Shortcuts is described as clunky, making it harder to use for toggling grayscale2024-05-24
Shortcuts is a major pain to develop, and automations can't change lock settings2024-05-19
Interface is poor and it fails at basic actions like triggering Siri2024-04-17
Developing anything in Shortcuts is frustrating for the author2024-03-31
Searching for Bluetooth toggle actions returns nothing, so the user can't find how to set Bluetooth2023-12-16
Extremely cumbersome for general programming tasks, author gave up implementing UUID42022-10-21
Interface still has a long way to go, and power requires knowing what you're doing2022-09-14
Bluetooth automation requires manual confirmation every time and the reason is unexplained2022-07-20
Even a tech person can't tell what the app is for or its use cases2021-12-04
Automations show a notification that must be tapped before the task runs2020-10-30
Writing shortcuts is hard, especially for non-programmers, and nearly impossible to set up on phones2020-09-08
Shortcuts felt buggy and the commenter couldn't get it working2020-02-21
Shortcuts without triggers only save a few taps, and the UI feels cluttered2019-09-26
Get Contents of URL action rejects data URIs, blocking the user's automation2014-12-11
Simple volume workflow launches apps and leaves user in editor, feels clunky2014-12-11