Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Text selection
Raised as a usability problem by 11 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2011–2025), in 11 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Precise mouse text selection is slow and needs repeated correctionsUnreviewed
20112026- Text selection is unpredictable on some websites and unsupported in some apps2025-12-14
- Selecting text is fiddly, selects too much or too little, forcing repeated attempts2025-09-24
- Selected text doesn't match native word boundaries, touch, or context menu behaviour2025-03-01
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
- Text selection is unpredictable on some websites and unsupported in some apps2025-12-14
- Selecting text is fiddly, selects too much or too little, forcing repeated attempts2025-09-24
- Selected text doesn't match native word boundaries, touch, or context menu behaviour2025-03-01
- Dragging to select a word often takes multiple tries and overshoots or misses the first letter2024-06-07
- Click-and-drag often triggers other actions instead of selecting text, since one gesture is overloaded2023-08-05
- Copying a whole line also grabs an unwanted newline, a common annoyance2021-05-07
- Hard to select text precisely up to the first letter or period2020-01-28
- Share popover appears on selection and covers the text being read2019-07-15
- Selecting text precisely with the mouse is slow and error-prone, requiring repeated corrections2015-10-03
- Mouse selection highlights logical characters that don't match what the user visually selected2011-08-11
- Any key press silently replaces selected text, destructive for novice users2011-03-14