Products · Pattern or everyday thing
TV remotes
Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2010–2025), in 11 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
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 13 complaints
- Rarely used buttons are cluttered in plain view and sometimes need the manual to understand2025-10-31
- Remotes have many useless buttons, while the one needed menu button is missing2025-10-31
- Remote gets accidentally set to wrong mode, controlling the wrong device2025-01-24
- TV remotes are hard to use, hard to access for many people2024-11-03
- Often can't find the TV remote, so it had to be tracked with a Trackr tag2018-04-24
- Too many buttons, impossible to figure out what each does2017-02-20
- Remote controls are cluttered with buttons, making them hard to use2013-11-19
- Multiple remotes and confusing input combinations needed to watch Netflix or play games2013-07-16
- Remote has too many buttons and users must switch modes through confusing inputs2013-05-21
- Remotes have too many buttons and devices often need extra presses to get inputs right2012-08-30
- Too many buttons; grandfather gets stuck pressing the wrong ones2012-08-30
- Having several remotes and universal remotes are hard to use2011-10-26
- Dozens of tiny rubber buttons are hard to use on remotes2010-11-11