Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Touchscreen keyboards
Raised as a usability problem by 90 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 85 threads.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Touchscreen typing is slow and error-proneUnreviewed
20082026- Keeps causing typos when typing on touchscreen keyboard2026-01-10
- Touch typing is hard on a touchscreen keyboard without physical keys2025-11-12
- No key position feel, so typing is error-prone and frustrating2025-11-11
Swipe keyboards misread words, forcing careful letter-by-letter swipingUnreviewed
20082026- Later swipe keyboards feel clumsy compared to the commenter's previous favorite2026-06-23
- Swipe typing on mobile keeps producing errors the commenter cannot break the habit of2026-06-07
- Swipe typing often picks the wrong word, seemingly at random2025-08-12
Autocorrect changes words unexpectedly and cursor is too imprecise to fixUnreviewed
20082026- Autocorrect is often wrong and hitting keys without tactile feedback is hard2025-09-04
- Keyboard fails about 10% of the time and autocorrect ignores Russian word suffixes, forcing repeated corrections2023-07-16
- Hard to type accurately, so typos and autocorrect errors need constant fixing2022-04-19
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 50 complaints
- Later swipe keyboards feel clumsy compared to the commenter's previous favorite2026-06-23
- Swipe typing on mobile keeps producing errors the commenter cannot break the habit of2026-06-07
- Keeps causing typos when typing on touchscreen keyboard2026-01-10
- Touch typing is hard on a touchscreen keyboard without physical keys2025-11-12
- No key position feel, so typing is error-prone and frustrating2025-11-11
- Touchscreen keyboards are nearly unusable without autocorrect assistance2025-10-06
- Hard to hit intended keys on a touchscreen keyboard without looking at fingers2025-10-06
- Touch keyboards without tactile feedback make people more likely to make mistakes2025-09-18
- Autocorrect is often wrong and hitting keys without tactile feedback is hard2025-09-04
- Swipe typing often picks the wrong word, seemingly at random2025-08-12
- Gliding over letters is not intuitive for typing text2025-06-05
- Swipe typing on a touchscreen keyboard is much slower than T9 and needs looking at the screen2024-12-10
- Keeps hitting the wrong keys, such as period instead of space2024-09-01
- Auto-correct and frequent mistyping make touchscreen typing slower and more frustrating2024-04-14
- Touchscreen keyboards made typing slower and more error-prone than physical keys2024-01-31
- Typing long emails on touchscreen phones is excruciatingly slow compared to BlackBerry physical keyboard2023-09-25
- Swipe keyboards force a space after every swiped word, breaking composite words2023-09-25
- Swipe typing on Android is still less accurate than physical keyboards2023-09-24
- Can't tell where finger is on flat screen keys, so blind typing is hard2023-09-24
- Editing text on touchscreens is error-prone, forcing constant backspace and retyping while attention is split from the screen2023-09-24
- Keyboard fails about 10% of the time and autocorrect ignores Russian word suffixes, forcing repeated corrections2023-07-16
- Touch keyboards make participating by typing on mobile frustrating2023-05-30
- Modern swipe keyboards misread words, forcing users to swipe every letter carefully2023-04-28
- Typing anything meaningful on a touch screen was awful2023-04-18
- Swipe typing on touchscreen keyboards is slower than typing on physical keys2023-03-02
- Typing on touchscreen is slow and error-prone compared to physical keyboards2022-10-26
- Typing on a touchscreen keyboard is worse than a tactile keyboard, missing physical feedback2022-09-28
- Suggests wrong words like 'née' instead of 'me', and Apple's swipe keyboard is hard to use2022-06-28
- Hard to type accurately, so typos and autocorrect errors need constant fixing2022-04-19
- Tapping individual keys on a touchscreen is slow compared with swipe typing2022-04-10
- Typing on a touchscreen is hard, especially in tiny windows where letters are barely visible2022-02-14
- Typing on touchscreens is very slow, far slower than a physical keyboard2022-01-06
- Dvorak layout works poorly with swipe-typing keyboards on phones2022-01-06
- Typing Python code on a tiny phone touch keyboard is awkward2021-11-06
- Touchscreen keyboards copy physical keyboard layouts, which seems ill-suited to a tiny touchscreen2021-09-23
- Keeps making typing mistakes on touchscreen keyboards and must look down to avoid errors2021-09-14
- Touchscreen typing feels slow because keys don't match intended keystrokes2021-06-07
- Typing on touch keyboards is so frustrating the commenter waits to comment until using a real keyboard2021-04-01
- Keeps making wrong key entries on small touchscreen keyboards2021-02-06
- Keys are missed when typing on a touchscreen on bumpy roads2021-01-22
- No tactile keys to feel finger position; symbol locations inconsistent across phones2020-11-02
- Typing on touch screens is worse than on a physical keyboard2020-10-15
- Typing C's punctuation symbols on a touchscreen was extremely difficult2019-12-15
- Typo errors can only be noticed by looking at the screen, not by feel2019-10-08
- No tactile feedback, so keys can't be felt blindly2019-08-29
- Can't physically feel which key was hit, so typing errors pile up2019-08-14
- Touchscreen keyboards cause many typing errors and waste users' time2019-02-28
- Selecting a range of text by touch is frustrating2019-01-20
- Constant typos on touch keyboards, even with autocorrect, for this user's thumbs2018-12-09
- Typing on touch keyboards is painful and annoying2018-10-19