Products · Broad category
Video conferencing
Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 9 years (2018–2026), in 12 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Mute icon shows current state rather than action, so clicking is unclearUnreviewed
20182026- Can't tell whether toggle buttons are on or off, must tap to find out2024-01-28
- Mute toggle icon shows current state instead of action, so users can't tell what clicking does2023-08-24
- Can't tell whether they are muted, so the mute button state is a guess2023-01-19
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 12 complaints
- Must exit the call and restart to grant screenshare permission2026-08-05
- Defaults show full-screen single participant and self-view, forcing users to find and change them2025-01-09
- Whiteboard support in video calls is universally awful, making whiteboard work hard remotely2024-10-12
- Can't tell whether toggle buttons are on or off, must tap to find out2024-01-28
- Mute toggle icon shows current state instead of action, so users can't tell what clicking does2023-08-24
- Can't tell whether they are muted, so the mute button state is a guess2023-01-19
- Forces voice-activated mic, causing unnecessary "you're muted" problems; push-to-talk is an afterthought2022-06-30
- Unmuting takes a moment to take effect, so speech gets delayed or clipped2022-04-13
- Screen sharing slows the computer to a crawl2021-01-10
- Audio drops before video, making the call basically unusable2020-12-15
- Calls waste minutes on audio problems, forcing repeated 'can you hear me' and muting fixes2019-06-09
- Getting a video meeting started takes forever, with poor video and audio quality2018-11-08