# Jelly UI Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/jelly-ui/ 23 people recommended Jelly UI in Hacker News comments, 16 had mixed feelings and 37 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 12 months, in 1 thread. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. 23 of the 23 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Jelly UI: Soft-body physics for native HTML form controls”. **Verdict:** More people criticize it than recommend it. People like its playful soft-body click effects on form controls and its web component implementation, though many say the constant animation is distracting and unsuited to production apps. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - Breaks standard UX expectations (4 comments in the sample): "I love this, but it does not seem to conform to standard UX best practices." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984316)) "I moved my scroll wheel a single tick and the content of the browser window completely changed with no movement to indicate scrolling was happening." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984779)) "A single function button should not behave differently based on where on the button you click it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985970)) - Performance costs from constant animation loop (3 comments in the sample): "if you have an idle task that is taking up a significant portion of the frame budget then its easy to have frame drops" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985606)) "runs a a RAF animation loop every 8ms across every component on the page that causes the entire document to repaint" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983683)) "has an animated SVG and moving DOM elements in the header which consume far more resources" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985687)) - Scroll wheel and scrolling behavior problems (3 comments in the sample): "a menu would be so much better instead of the weird scroll-jacking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983219)) "Navigating by clicking and holding a desired position on the scrollbar is completely broken." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984398)) "It ignores my scroll wheel most of the time if I try to scroll multiple times in a row." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984816)) - Animations are distracting or overdone (2 comments in the sample): "the reactive animations would bother me (to the point of deeming it unusable) in any production app or website" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48989439)) "The animations, in this case, are not helpful. They distract from what you're trying to do." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999562)) ## Why people recommend it - Fun, whimsical, delightful visual effects (7 comments in the sample): "Adorable and whimsy. One nitpick - when writing uppercase letters in text field they should make larger ripples than lowercase." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48992640)) "Cute (and I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically), and I appreciate that it appears to gracefully degrade" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982148)) "I love the aesthetic, and I really love that they implemented it as a web component library." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982798)) - Supports reduced-motion preference (2 comments in the sample): "I actually like it just fine with motion reduced, but it's unbearable with full motion." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984681)) "I'm so glad it allows for preferences to reduce motion." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982385)) - Well-built web component implementation (1 comment in the sample): "You've built something really great here, your grasp of web components is incredibly strong" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49017221)) ## Other UI component libraries people recommend - [shadcn/ui](https://hackerapproved.com/p/shadcn-ui/): 54 recommend, 17 mixed, 49 criticize - [Tailwind UI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tailwind-ui/): 22 recommend, 14 mixed, 27 criticize - [Radix UI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/radix/): 11 recommend, 4 mixed, 17 criticize - [React Aria](https://hackerapproved.com/p/react-aria/): 8 recommend, 0 mixed, 0 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Jelly UI", https://hackerapproved.com/p/jelly-ui/ (23 recommend, 16 mixed, 37 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.