Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Text input fields
Raised as a usability problem by 15 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 15 threads.
People raised many different problems with Text input fields, 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 15 complaints
- Enter submits in some apps and inserts newline in others, forcing users to track which is which2026-04-12
- Custom text inputs replace native keyboard input and make typing worse2025-12-16
- Loses entire typed contents after a network hiccup2025-08-28
- Backspace takes five presses to delete one emoji family while Delete removes it at once2023-02-25
- Inputs with only placeholder text and no label leave users unsure what to enter2022-11-21
- Text editor drawn on canvas is invisible to the accessibility tree2022-03-19
- Arrow-key cursor movement over flag sequences is hard to get right and buggy2022-01-27
- Typing becomes hard when screen echo lags over about 150ms, so typos are harder to catch2019-08-14
- Long bullet points are cut off, requiring scrolling sideways to read them2019-02-28
- Emacs-style line-start and line-end keys don't work in text boxes2019-01-10
- Typing mixed Farsi and English produces confusing word order that users don't expect2018-11-04
- Single click unexpectedly selects text, so repeated clicks turn into double or triple clicks2015-09-30
- Pasting a title over the limit blocks editing, forcing users to cut and paste text elsewhere2014-12-04
- Thin mouse cursor is hard to spot in large blocks of text2012-11-28
- Editing text one character at a time with arrow and backspace keys takes too many presses2012-10-19