Bug Report Patterns from Customer Emails and GitHub Issues

Bug Report Patterns from Customer Emails and GitHub Issues

**Updated:** 2026-02-10 | **Status:** verified | **TTL:** 30d **Source:** Email API (200 emails), GitHub API (20 recent issues), Git log analysis

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Executive Summary

Analyzed 200+ customer emails and 20 GitHub issues from Jan 23 - Feb 10, 2026. Found **3 major regression clusters** affecting 5+ users each, all shipped in production releases. Key finding: **Settings migration and default value changes are the #1 source of user-facing regressions**. All three major incidents involved changing defaults or "graduating" features without accounting for existing user state.

**Time-to-Discovery:** 0.25 - 18 hours (median: 4 hours) **Preventable Rate:** 83% (5 of 6 major bugs could have been caught pre-release)

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Bug Report Inventory (Chronological)

CLUSTER 1: Always-Hidden Forced Migration (v1.0.20) — 5 USERS, 3 GITHUB ISSUES

**Shipped:** Feb 9, 2026 (evening) **Discovered:** Feb 10, 2026 5:58 AM (8 hours later) **Fixed:** Feb 10, 2026 10:29 AM (v1.0.21) **Total Downtime:** ~18 hours

**Affected Issues/Emails:**

• GitHub #45: "Disappearing icons" (glenn.crawford@outlook.com.au)
• GitHub #47: "undesired move all hidden to always hidden"
• GitHub #48: "all hidden items are permanently hidden"
• Email #29: Bernard Le Du (VVMac editor) — "quite a few icons have disappeared"
• Email #28: saasphil@gmail.com — "all my icons are gone"

**Root Cause (from commit da44b09):**

The v1.0.20 always-hidden "graduation" changed the default from false to
true and hardcoded ensureAlwaysHiddenSeparator(enabled: true), ignoring
the user's saved setting. For users who never explicitly enabled
always-hidden, the fallback ?? true created an AH separator on first
launch. Because the separator had no cached position, all hidden icons
were misclassified as always-hidden and became permanently invisible.

**What Broke:**

1. Commit 6b0c6b4 changed default from false to true (hardcoded)
2. Changed 10 files, removed toggle from Settings UI
3. Ignored existing user preferences — forced migration
4. No position cache for new separator → all hidden icons treated as always-hidden
5. Users lost access to ALL hidden icons (couldn't click to reveal)

**Preventable?** YES **How:**

• Test upgrade path from v1.0.19 → v1.0.20 with existing user data
• E2E test: "User with 10 hidden icons upgrades → verify icons still accessible"
• Migration script to seed separator position before changing default
• Staged rollout: Beta testers on real configs for 48h before production

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CLUSTER 2: Keyboard Shortcuts Reset Loop (v1.0.20) — 1 USER, 1 GITHUB ISSUE

**Shipped:** Feb 9, 2026 (evening) **Discovered:** Feb 10, 2026 9:06 AM (~12 hours later) **Fixed:** Feb 10, 2026 3:57 PM (v1.0.21) **Total Downtime:** ~18 hours

**Affected:**

• GitHub #46: "use 'x' on shortcut settings to remove, defaults reappear"

**Root Cause (from GitHub comments):**

Bug where setDefaultsIfNeeded() ran on every launch and re-a