Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Unicode
Raised as a usability problem by 26 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 19 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
Entering symbols requires memorizing codes or using a clunky character mapUnreviewed
20102026- Typing a character via a two-key sequence app is error-prone and hard to remember2025-11-08
- Entering symbols requires memorizing codes, using a clunky character map, or an unintuitive compose key2024-01-06
- Typing arrows like ← and ↑ requires cumbersome utilities or codes, too hard to type often2010-10-30
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 26 complaints
- Can't tell how many characters or glyphs a string spans, so layout breaks2026-10-06
- Rejecting some look-alike characters makes behaviour inconsistent and confusing for non-Latin script users2026-02-25
- Small font and overlaying black box with arrow hide parts of symbols on iPhone2025-12-31
- Text placed over grid background image is hard to read2025-12-30
- Search field doesn't look like a text input, and fails on 'greater than' without a dash2025-12-30
- Descriptions are abbreviated and full names only appear after clicking each symbol2025-12-30
- Tapping a tile highlights it but does nothing else, and the arrow to open the page is hard to find2025-12-30
- Expand button is too small to click2025-12-30
- The arrow is too small to tap on mobile2025-12-30
- Typing a character via a two-key sequence app is error-prone and hard to remember2025-11-08
- Entering symbols requires memorizing codes, using a clunky character map, or an unintuitive compose key2024-01-06
- Developers must guess the encoding of byte arrays, leading to hacks and errors2022-10-04
- Japanese characters display inconsistently across devices and apps, requiring constant fiddling2021-10-28
- Existing Unicode lookup tools have confusing interfaces and buggy behavior2021-02-05
- Unicode styled letters look like normal text but can't be found by ordinary search2020-04-30
- Unicode domain names are nearly impossible to type or verbally convey to others2020-03-14
- Markup codepoints in text fields can't be positioned into or deleted, breaking editing2018-12-05
- Definition of character sets is ambiguous and confusing for readers2017-03-04
- Standard leaves hard decisions to programmers, making it hard to use robustly2016-12-24
- Users get locked out when logging in from devices without the same input method2016-12-14
- Official Unicode specifications are impenetrable and hard to work with2016-11-21
- Page is broken on mobile and hard to navigate on desktop2015-11-11
- Can't select and copy the URL on the slides; must type it manually2015-11-11
- Delete removes different characters depending on cursor origin with mixed English and Hebrew text2015-03-17
- Non-ASCII text needs fonts, locale setup and compatible tools, else boxes and cryptic errors appear2013-03-04
- Typing arrows like ← and ↑ requires cumbersome utilities or codes, too hard to type often2010-10-30