Products · Broad category
Text editors
Raised as a usability problem by 114 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 109 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
- 2
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4Input lag makes typing feel unresponsiveUnreviewed
- 5
- 6
- 7
Every issue, all time, most people first
Editors take very long to open files of 200MB to 1GBUnreviewed
20082026- Editors lag on large files because they parse the whole file for syntax highlighting2026-09-02
- Typing and scrolling lag badly in files over 1MB, making editors unusable2026-09-02
- Editors freeze, crash, truncate or take minutes to move cursor on large files2022-04-03
Tabs and spaces display differently, hiding inconsistent indentationUnreviewed
20082026- Editors display tabs and spaces differently, so inconsistent indentation looks correct and goes unnoticed2026-09-07
- Tabs and spaces can't be visually lined up, breaking a basic editing interaction2022-11-24
- Editors auto-indent incorrectly, forcing manual whitespace conversion and making mixed tabs and spaces hard to see2021-09-27
Clicking line start puts cursor before indentation spacesUnreviewed
20082026- Cursor lands between the lines when moving over space-indented text2024-07-06
- Clicking to place cursor or select indentation spaces is hard, with a much smaller click target than tabs2024-04-18
- Cursor jumps to the last line while typing2023-02-21
Input lag makes typing feel unresponsiveUnreviewed
20082026- Typing with noticeable input latency feels unpleasant and irritating to the user2025-10-16
- Noticeable delay between keypress and character appearing on screen2020-07-26
- Noticeable input lag makes typing feel unresponsive and broken2020-04-11
Ctrl+D does different things across editors, surprising switchersUnreviewed
20082026- Keyboard shortcuts for newline versus submit are inconsistent, causing confusion and friction2026-05-05
- Inconsistent key bindings across editors make switching between them painful2024-01-25
- Unclear where ctrl-arrow stops and how cursor behaves; must wait for jump, unpredictable across editors2023-08-10
Mouse and standard shortcuts take too many steps to edit textUnreviewed
20082026- Editing text with mouse or standard shortcuts takes too many steps and is frustrating2017-09-19
- Editing without modal keys forces constant reaching for control keys or mouse2016-10-05
- Editing requires many keypresses to select and delete text, a tedious gap from intent2014-12-10
Editors become nearly unusable with one very long lineUnreviewed
20082026- Editor panels consume screen space and force manual management of extra views2024-09-29
- Editors become nearly unusable when a single on-screen line is very long2023-10-09
- Editors that won't scroll past the last line force writers to view the screen bottom2011-11-28
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
- Editors display tabs and spaces differently, so inconsistent indentation looks correct and goes unnoticed2026-09-07
- Dragging a URL into the editor downloads content instead of inserting the plain URL text2026-09-02
- Editors lag on large files because they parse the whole file for syntax highlighting2026-09-02
- Editors have too many powerful editing features for a read-and-navigate workflow2026-09-02
- Typing and scrolling lag badly in files over 1MB, making editors unusable2026-09-02
- After cutting text the editor reflows, so the user must find the paste location again2026-07-24
- Markdown rendering and streaming are slow and laggy, locking up the UI2026-05-17
- Keyboard shortcuts for newline versus submit are inconsistent, causing confusion and friction2026-05-05
- Moving around TUI text editors with hjkl keys is slow2026-04-25
- Can't select individual letters inside ligatures like fi or ffi2025-12-27
- Typing with noticeable input latency feels unpleasant and irritating to the user2025-10-16
- Deleting one visible emoji with backspace removes only part of it2025-08-23
- Browser search fails to find content unloaded when scrolled out of view2025-07-01
- Undo only works within one editor, not across editors, so it takes getting used to2025-02-11
- So much fiddling just to get started, and slowdown as functionality is added2025-02-01
- Editors add thick sidebars and embedded panes that are hard or impossible to remove2025-01-24
- Writing scripts on a phone touchscreen is a nightmare, with constant typing errors2024-12-10
- Merge views are cluttered and feel treacherous to navigate when reconciling changes2024-12-07
- Proper bidi text selection splits the selection and feels confusing and annoying2024-12-04
- Minimalist interface turns off many visitors, and column layout draws criticism2024-11-29
- Hard to track seven side-by-side views; cloning files is cumbersome and confusing2024-10-30
- Users spend lots of time finding compatible extensions, and plugins clutter consoles with distracting logs2024-10-24
- Editor shows one thing but saves different line endings, hidden from the user until reopening2024-10-14
- Leading space in find/replace text is hard to see in proportional font2024-10-13
- Editor panels consume screen space and force manual management of extra views2024-09-29
- Keeping carefully aligned code is a pain to maintain through later edits2024-09-29
- Cursor lands between the lines when moving over space-indented text2024-07-06
- Clicking to place cursor or select indentation spaces is hard, with a much smaller click target than tabs2024-04-18
- Editors make users wade through many features before basic text editing2024-04-15
- Frequent small freezes and lag break concentration and feel unpredictable2024-02-18
- Suggestion and autocomplete features are enabled by default and hard to turn off2024-01-27
- Inconsistent key bindings across editors make switching between them painful2024-01-25
- Upsell popup and notification prompt interrupt typing right after launch2024-01-05
- Many text editors feel unintuitive and buggy to use2023-12-26
- Cursor jumps unpredictably around bidi punctuation in mixed RTL and LTR text2023-10-23
- Editors become nearly unusable when a single on-screen line is very long2023-10-09
- Line wrap on line 27 is confusing to read2023-10-07
- The T-Menu looks confusing, and the drag animations are jarring2023-09-25
- Text loses formatting and meaning when moved between environments, like superscripts turning into normal characters2023-09-23
- Unclear where ctrl-arrow stops and how cursor behaves; must wait for jump, unpredictable across editors2023-08-10
- Cmd+arrow cursor jumps over two words when an em dash has no spaces2023-03-12
- Cursor jumps to the last line while typing2023-02-21
- Word-jump selection stops at underscores inconsistently, forcing many extra arrow presses2023-01-26
- Moving the right hand to arrow and home/end keys is slow and error-prone2023-01-15
- Commenter couldn't find how to do a task in the editor2022-12-27
- Tabs and spaces can't be visually lined up, breaking a basic editing interaction2022-11-24
- Cursor movement and line-by-line entry cause scoring mistakes and distract from the task2022-06-29
- Editors freeze, crash, truncate or take minutes to move cursor on large files2022-04-03
- Mixed right-to-left and left-to-right text behaves unintuitively when editing, especially with numerals2022-01-26
- Pressing escape accidentally deletes all changes with no way to recover2021-09-29