Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Text messaging
Raised as a usability problem by 11 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 10 threads.
People raised many different problems with Text messaging, 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 11 complaints
- Reacting to a message repeats the whole quoted message, cluttering the chat with duplicates2026-06-16
- Hard to find one old message in text conversation history2023-08-15
- Typing messages on tiny phone keyboards is frustrating and distracting, and voice recognition fails with names2022-01-20
- Typing plans by text on a phone is too slow, so people call instead2021-11-12
- Giving directions by text needs many slow back-and-forth waits2021-10-05
- Text messaging has a ghastly user interface, per the quoted Spolsky line2021-02-17
- Agreeing on something by text takes an infuriating number of messages compared with a short call2021-02-17
- Input lag and delays in interaction even on a fast computer2020-05-17
- Can't figure out how to send texts or tell if new messages arrived2016-03-11
- Text messaging has a ghastly, awkward input method requiring many keystrokes2014-04-22
- Someone sending many messages in a row causes an annoying notification barrage2012-08-20