I became EXTREMELY frustrated with the non-intuitive nature of the latest Bridge. I worked through issues with ChatGPT and asked it to distill all that frustration into usable bug fix data for you. See below.

I am reporting what I believe is both a usability bug and a major design regression in Adobe Bridge 2023 (and possibly newer).

The core functionality for star ratings, reject flags, and labels—which are central to Bridge’s role as a media triage and asset manager—has been made incredibly difficult or nearly impossible to access in recent versions. I'm an advanced user trying to visually triage and organize a large number of video segments. This used to be Bridge's strength. Now it feels like an invisible obstacle course.

Here are the specific issues:

There is no longer a visible toggle or setting in the View menu (or anywhere else) to enable thumbnail badges, ratings, or reject flag visibility. These are either buried, automatically suppressed, or simply missing.

The "reject" function, which used to be applied via a visible icon or shortcut, now appears to have no visual representation unless manually filtered via the Filter panel. There is no red X, no feedback, no context menu option—just silence.

Clicking what appears to be a "reject" icon next to the stars actually just clears the star rating. There is no clear indication of what this does until trial and error reveals it. This is confusing and misleading UI.

Right-clicking a thumbnail does not offer any options to rate, reject, or label the file. These options used to be available in earlier versions. Now they are hidden or stripped out.

Keyboard shortcuts (1–5 for stars, 6–9 for labels, Delete for reject) still function—but unless you already know them and have the proper workspace, thumbnail size, and panels enabled, there is no way to know how or where to apply these settings.

Preferences, View settings, and even the Workspace system no longer give users consistent control over what metadata is visible or how to apply it.

Many support replies—even from Adobe staff—reference Lightroom Classic when users are asking about Bridge. This contributes to the confusion and makes users feel abandoned.

The result: a program designed to enable fast media triage now requires hours of troubleshooting just to get a visible star or reject badge. This is not user error—this is a UX breakdown.

What I'm asking for:

Restore visible, clickable badges or icons for rating, rejecting, and labeling in the thumbnail view.

Add clear right-click menu options for applying ratings and labels.

Restore or add a setting (in Preferences or View) to explicitly enable or disable thumbnail badges.

Clarify the purpose of UI elements like the blank-star "reject-looking" icon so it is not misleading.

Provide a consistent visual feedback mechanism so users know what metadata is assigned and can trust what they’re seeing.

Update your documentation and support articles to reflect the current UI, not outdated or Lightroom-specific instructions.

This is not a niche complaint. It affects the core purpose of Bridge and creates enormous friction in workflows that used to be seamless.

Thank you for reading. I truly want to see Bridge succeed—but right now, it feels broken in the most fundamental way.