Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Tab groups
Raised as a usability problem by 29 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 25 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
Tab key sometimes jumps to bookmarks or apps bar instead of pageUnreviewed
20102026- Tab key behaviour is considered miserable to use2022-02-24
- Bookmark managers have too much friction to use, so tabs are forgotten2021-11-11
- Tab switching sometimes doesn't work on sites, forcing workarounds2020-09-19
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 29 complaints
- AI tab completion is annoying and interrupts the author's coding flow2026-01-19
- Effortful to organise, easy to put tabs in wrong group2026-01-08
- Suggestions distract and break the user's train of thought while coding2025-01-17
- Row of plain buttons doesn't show which controls belong to the selected tab2024-11-15
- Tab completion is distracting and annoying, with no quick way to toggle it2024-10-30
- Making a tab group takes too long, and the interface changes too much when switching2024-08-09
- After selecting an option, it shows Loading then goes away with no result2024-07-06
- Interface loads all sessions at once and pegs the CPU for minutes2023-10-15
- Tab extensions become unusably slow with over 1000 tabs open2022-11-15
- Tab key behaviour is considered miserable to use2022-02-24
- Bookmark managers have too much friction to use, so tabs are forgotten2021-11-11
- UI is buggy and the extension ignores pinned tabs2021-07-04
- Randomly forgets some tab groups2021-05-14
- Cannot open a single saved tab; it opens the entire window instead2021-05-14
- Tab switching sometimes doesn't work on sites, forcing workarounds2020-09-19
- New tabs aren't added to saved session; must manually click Add to session; endless auto-saved copies2019-03-05
- Commenter couldn't figure out what the extension was trying to do2017-08-10
- Shared tab widths force constant editor width and tab setting adjustments to avoid horizontal scrolling2017-06-16
- Tab characters are horrible to use where indentation matters2017-06-15
- Manually organizing hundreds of tabs feels slow and cumbersome2016-12-21
- Tab Center is very slow when many tabs are open2016-11-15
- Switch-with-preview forces a slowdown and delay before the intended action2016-11-15
- Prompts to close tab whenever the pointer leaves the document, even for normal mouse movement2014-06-06
- Groups resize and move around unpredictably when the browser window is resized2012-10-30
- Tabs look identical to spaces, so inconsistent indentation is easy to create2012-08-18
- Tab sometimes skips to the bookmarks or apps bar instead of the web page2012-05-20
- Images are too small, so users must click each one to see what it is2010-10-28
- Requires too much work to group and switch tabs2010-07-26
- Dragging tabs into separate windows is harder than in Chrome2010-07-23