# Snap 48 Hacker News commenters recommended Snap and 187 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Installs apps in self-contained bundles that leave system libraries alone, and makes version upgrades safer. Critics say it clutters disks and breaks things, and that its sandboxing depends on AppArmor. ## Why people recommend it - Teaches programming to kids (6 comments): "Scratch/Snap is fine for what it is, as a way to get young kids interested in the simple primitives of programming and logic." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49674884)) "they also have libraries of sprites and backgrounds which are pretty useful when we use this with students" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49666137)) "block based visual programming, no syntax error, no installation (even works offline once loaded)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49729180)) - Bundles tools hard to set up (4 comments): "With snaps you effectively get rolling releases of LXD, microk8s, openstack, docker and other relevant things." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459632)) "I kind of like snaps, other than being easy to make, is that unlike flatpak, they can bundle CLI apps." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109329)) "I have used Snap successfully for some projects that are annoying to set up manually" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50150290)) - Sandboxes apps and limits home access (3 comments): "Without snap, the front door is wide open: all applications you run are unconfined within your user account" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431017)) "Snaps are a lot lot better in this regard especially in the perspective of connections." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49682900)) "You get exactly that with snaps/flatpaks which are not given access to your $HOME." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47121101)) - Self-contained installs leave libraries alone (2 comments): "i like being able to install e.g. a language toolchain in a self contained way that doesn't depend on or pollute my system libraries" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103920)) "install a Snap/Flatpak without cluttering the system libraries" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49693511)) ## What people warn about - Breaks apps and mount points (5 comments): "Unfortunately, it just results in breaking those applications specifically instead, in weird and stupid ways that are difficult to debug." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46412188)) "it breaks basic things such as accessing a folder on a different mount point that the user normally can access perfectly fine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47888145)) "after some snap update on arch apparamor or some other _thing_ blocked start of the electron-based snaps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50150453)) - Clutters disk and home directory (4 comments): "Snaps are annoying, because they don't have a cleaning mechanism and old versions just clog your hard drive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46798575)) "From a ~/snap directory that can't be hidden by design (and the developers are rather vocal about that)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46274114)) "Snaps are ridiculously hostile abusing the mount system and polluting all kinds of places where they have no business going" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47646913)) - Forced preinstall and hard to remove (4 comments): "You can't remove snaps from Ubuntu, because you lose half of the Ubuntu software that matters when you remove it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50149473)) "We had a fleet of systems inadvertently moved to Snap, only learned through a loss of announcements on removal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901693)) "to create artifical market share for their proprietary and paid solutions by preinstalling it on the free version" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46414183)) - Large security surface, weak off Ubuntu (2 comments): "The attack surface of a privileged install daemon that parses arbitrary package manifests is just too broad." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431217)) "Snap relies heavily on AppArmor for sandboxing, so on anything non-Ubuntu the sandboxing is non-existent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708547)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Flatpak](https://hackerapproved.com/p/flatpak.md): 181 recommend - [AppImage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/appimage.md): 51 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Snap", https://hackerapproved.com/p/snap/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).