Products · Product
SwiftUI
Raised as a usability problem by 100 people on Hacker News over 8 years (2019–2026), in 69 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Anything slightly complicated becomes so hard that developers fall back to UIKitUnreviewed
20192026- Anything slightly complicated becomes a huge nightmare, so developers fall back to UIKit2023-10-20
- UIs respond more slowly than 25-year-old interfaces on much faster machines2023-08-26
- Basic navigation pushes require an irritating workaround compared with UIKit2023-07-09
APIs have too many options and little documentation, making them hard to useUnreviewed
20192026- Documentation assumes unexplained prior knowledge, confusing newcomers to the API2024-01-07
- Hard to find the right way to do things; poorly named, poorly documented API2023-08-26
- Some APIs have too many options and little good documentation, making them hard to use2022-05-25
Complex layouts require trial and error with unclear interactionsUnreviewed
20192026- Layouts fall apart unexpectedly at unfortunate moments, feeling fragile2026-08-03
- Designing layouts requires writing text code, though designers work visually first and then recreate it2024-09-17
- Complex layouts become hard to understand, requiring trial and error with unclear interactions2024-08-22
Cannot change the tab order in which text fields receive focusUnreviewed
20192026- No simple way to set initial text field focus; needs fragile async delay hack2022-08-28
- MacOS version is buggy and inconsistent, with focus issues in lists of text fields and hard window management2022-05-25
- Cannot change the tab order in which text fields receive focus2021-12-06
Preview stops after compiler errors and must be manually resumedUnreviewed
20192026- Preview stops after compiler errors and must be manually resumed2025-04-05
- Preview takes around 10 seconds to refresh after changes, with frequent compile errors2025-01-17
- Builds fail randomly and previews hang the machine, needing repeated rebuilds2020-09-14
Error messages are obscure, so developers can't work out what went wrongUnreviewed
20192026- Compiler error messages are cryptic, making problems hard to diagnose2024-09-18
- Error messages are obscure, so developers can't work out what went wrong2020-09-15
- Error messages point to a location far from the actual problem2020-02-14
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 50 complaints
- Documentation is hard to use because content is put into videos2026-08-05
- Language is overcomplex, so developers avoid it unless forced2026-08-03
- Reactivity reacts to wrong changes, making behavior unpredictable and hard to follow2026-08-03
- Loading and showing many list items in SwiftUI performs poorly2026-08-03
- Layouts fall apart unexpectedly at unfortunate moments, feeling fragile2026-08-03
- Walking users through multi-step flows requires convoluted state-tweaking, making development tedious2026-08-03
- Hard to find fixes in video tutorials; prefers written docs2026-08-02
- Easy things are easy but smooth scrolling and precise layouts are hard to do2026-08-02
- Modifier order changes results, so developers swap them until things work2026-08-02
- Developer experience is bad because the framework keeps changing under developers2026-07-21
- Basic functions like undo/redo are broken or harder in SwiftUI than older frameworks2026-06-08
- Developers struggle to build features; UI requires absurd workarounds to get desired behavior2026-02-04
- Framework so hard to use that native developers despise it2026-02-03
- Building a graphics editor in SwiftUI is incredibly difficult; NSAttributedString is opaque2026-01-26
- Felt sluggish and needed frequent restarts even for simple components2025-11-11
- Compiler fails with 'unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time' errors on ordinary code2025-10-25
- Becomes bewildering and hard to understand beyond simple views, and scales poorly for customization2025-10-11
- Developers struggle to build simple apps because documentation and error messages are poor2025-10-04
- SwiftUI is harder to work with than UIKit for the commenter2025-09-04
- SwiftUI is too broken to build real interfaces with2025-08-26
- Hard to trace why views re-render or state sync breaks; behavior is opaque2025-06-23
- Implicit observables are unstable and hard to debug when they fail2025-06-23
- Preview stops after compiler errors and must be manually resumed2025-04-05
- Page is nearly unreadable: dark text on dark background with a snowstorm overlay2025-03-04
- Compiler gives unhelpful errors, forcing trial-and-error commenting out of code2025-03-04
- Lazy grids lack cell reuse, making them unusable as UICollectionView replacements2025-02-12
- Preview takes around 10 seconds to refresh after changes, with frequent compile errors2025-01-17
- Docs are so poor the author had to learn pinch-zoom and panning by trial and error2024-12-22
- Docs don't cover needed chart functionality, forcing guesswork and trial and error2024-11-30
- Compiler error messages are cryptic, making problems hard to diagnose2024-09-18
- SwiftUI is described as a mess and slow to use2024-09-18
- Preview canvas is all but unusable for many developers with complex Xcode projects2024-09-18
- Hard to get desktop-style layouts like balanced whitespace and form alignment2024-09-17
- Performance lag and complex layouts were hard to work through even after a year2024-09-17
- Designing layouts requires writing text code, though designers work visually first and then recreate it2024-09-17
- Most SwiftUI widgets perform terribly, and List imposes constraints the developer can't accept2024-08-23
- Hits a wall when needing specific control, forcing wild workarounds and trial and error2024-08-22
- Documentation for SwiftUI is awful, relying almost entirely on inline code docs2024-08-22
- Complex layouts become hard to understand, requiring trial and error with unclear interactions2024-08-22
- Complex layouts become hard to understand, relying on trial and error with unclear interactions2024-08-22
- Visual editor frequently breaks when code and editor sync2024-07-15
- Docs refer to outdated versions and screenshots don't match current Xcode2024-07-01
- Becomes hairy and hard to work with as apps grow complex2024-06-14
- Steps outside the happy path hit baffling compiler errors and poor UI performance2024-05-21
- Going off the standard path is hard; workarounds are crazy complex2024-04-04
- Apple's recommended state practices don't work; observation is incomplete, making development painful2024-02-21
- Complex map interactions with bindings are very hard to get working, wasting days of developer time2024-02-21
- Can't set a keyboard shortcut for deleting Messages conversations, and ported controls feel wrong2024-02-20
- A type error puts a squiggle on the whole function with a timeout message2024-02-04
- Buggy libraries, incomplete docs and poor APIs make developing with SwiftUI frustrating2024-02-04