Products · Product
Zsh
Raised as a usability problem by 66 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 58 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Needs many default tweaks before tab completion works wellUnreviewed
20092026- Zsh constantly breaks scripts, and the assistant must be told the shell every time2026-07-26
- Zsh needs too many tweaks to its defaults before completion works well2025-07-20
- Zsh completion is very powerful but exceedingly complex beyond basic file completion2023-08-11
Shell slow to start and tab completion lags by secondsUnreviewed
20092026- New login shell takes about 3.5 seconds to open2025-09-17
- New terminal windows take about five seconds to become usable2024-07-29
- Shell becomes slow and unusable when changing into certain directories2024-06-07
Path tab completion behaves inconsistently between commandsUnreviewed
20092026- Path argument tab completion behaves confusingly and inconsistently between commands2022-06-16
- Tab completion hides files after cd, forcing an extra ls command2022-01-31
- Tab completion inserts origin/branch instead of the local branch name wanted2013-05-11
Tab completion never offers existing filenames for mkdirUnreviewed
20092026- Never autocompletes mkdir with existing filenames, forcing the user to type long names2022-05-16
- Autocompletion gets in the way, e.g. refuses to complete tar filenames with unfamiliar extensions2021-10-15
- Cd autocompletes directory names from global variables, which the commenter found maddening2012-01-31
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
- Felt laggy and buggy, broke when screen was resized2026-08-16
- Zsh constantly breaks scripts, and the assistant must be told the shell every time2026-07-26
- Hard to write a complex prompt; needed careful study of the manual2026-06-18
- Individual builtin docs are buried in one big page, so readers can't find them2026-04-04
- New login shell takes about 3.5 seconds to open2025-09-17
- Zsh needs too many tweaks to its defaults before completion works well2025-07-20
- Shell became so slow and bloated the commenter switched away from it2024-11-16
- New terminal windows take about five seconds to become usable2024-07-29
- Shell becomes slow and unusable when changing into certain directories2024-06-07
- Official docs lack examples, forcing reliance on conflicting third-party examples2024-04-06
- Option name is hard to remember or spell, users misread it2024-03-10
- Had to port bashrc config to switch shells, so gave up and returned to bash2024-03-08
- Hard to configure out of the box and completions are slow2024-03-07
- Irritating when tools don't complete paths like Emacs find-file does2024-03-07
- History search gets ever slower with tens of thousands of entries2024-02-21
- Man pages are terrible and zsh's extra features are hard to learn2024-02-14
- Needs about 20 lines of config; vi quirks like backspace must be overridden individually2023-10-02
- Needs time-consuming customization before its benefits over bash appear2023-08-26
- Zsh completion is very powerful but exceedingly complex beyond basic file completion2023-08-11
- Can't see the pre-substitution command actually typed, only the expanded outcome2023-04-24
- Incremental search shows irrelevant results while typing, which is distracting2023-04-23
- ZSH is slow to respond and sometimes displays things incorrectly2023-02-09
- Too many bracket and loop syntaxes, so unclear which one to use2022-11-13
- New shell randomly picks which closed shell's commands to remember2022-10-13
- Path argument tab completion behaves confusingly and inconsistently between commands2022-06-16
- Never autocompletes mkdir with existing filenames, forcing the user to type long names2022-05-16
- Feels laggy and over-clever, so the commenter switched back to Bash2022-04-10
- Tab completion hides files after cd, forcing an extra ls command2022-01-31
- Autocomplete is missing features, slow, and hard to configure2021-12-04
- Setting up a fast git status prompt is painful; vcs_info is too slow2021-10-20
- Automatic suggestions and constantly changing text colours are distracting and chaotic, unlike on-demand completion2021-10-20
- Advanced zsh features are harder to figure out than expected2021-10-20
- Choosing vim keybindings breaks reverse search, and the workarounds aren't equivalent2021-10-20
- Autocompletion gets in the way, e.g. refuses to complete tar filenames with unfamiliar extensions2021-10-15
- Bash and zsh are awkward for both quick typed commands and larger scripts2021-05-17
- Zsh uses excess CPU when switching back to its guake window, worsening over time2021-02-12
- Zsh's opinionated defaults clash with long-practised bash habits, making it unusable without configuration2020-11-30
- Spending too much time messing with configs to get it how wanted2020-09-30
- Autocomplete is slow and opaque, so the user switched back to bash2020-08-24
- Zsh docs are one huge book, hard to navigate2020-02-22
- Pasted commands don't run, forcing an extra keypress to execute links2020-01-21
- Typos in zsh completion leave an empty list with no trail to compare against2020-01-16
- Same option spelled differently across docs, so searching man pages is confusing2019-06-06
- Writing custom ZSH completions feels awkward and unintuitive to the author2019-05-19
- Scripting language is non-intuitive and the author still mixes it up after years2018-12-28
- Writing scripts in Zsh is a painful, headache-inducing experience even after years2018-02-01
- Hard to write clean scripts, constantly hits walls needing hacks2017-11-01
- Docs are vague and disorganized, organized by flag rather than task, hard to find answers2017-10-21
- Entire subsystems are undocumented, making the shell user-unfriendly2017-10-20
- Shell becomes very slow and crawls when entering large git repositories2017-08-31