instrumentDOM leaks a document click handler when the refcount hits zero on a removal with different capture options (e.g. Radix DismissableLayer)

[azialah]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have checked for existing issues
• I have reviewed the documentation
• I am using the latest SDK release: observed on 10.72.0; instrumentDOM is byte-identical in 10.75.3 and 11.0.0 (build/esm/instrumentation/dom.js)

How do you use Sentry?

Sentry Saas (sentry.io)

Which SDK are you using?

@sentry/react (the code is in @sentry/browser-utils)

SDK Version

10.72.0 (also checked 10.75.3 and 11.0.0)

Framework Version

React 19.2.8, @radix-ui/react-dismissable-layer 1.1.19 (via Radix Dialog)

Link to Sentry event

N/A. This is a listener leak, not an error event.

Reproduction Example/SDK Setup

// @vitest-environment jsdom (Chrome behaves the same way)
import * as Sentry from "@sentry/react";

// Count what really attaches to document, underneath the SDK's wrapper.
const live = { true: new Set(), false: new Set() };
const P = EventTarget.prototype, add = P.addEventListener, rm = P.removeEventListener;
const cap = (o) => (typeof o === "boolean" ? o : !!o?.capture);
P.addEventListener = function (t, fn, o) { if (this === document && t === "click") live[cap(o)].add(fn); return add.call(this, t, fn, o); };
P.removeEventListener = function (t, fn, o) { if (this === document && t === "click") live[cap(o)].delete(fn); return rm.call(this, t, fn, o); };
const count = () => live.true.size + live.false.size;

Sentry.init({ dsn: "https://public@o0.ingest.sentry.io/0", defaultIntegrations: false, integrations: [Sentry.breadcrumbsIntegration()] });
const baseline = count(); // 1: the global handler

// Radix DismissableLayer's document click listeners: mount, a pointerdown
// inside the layer, then unmount.
const never = () => {}, onCapture = () => {}, onBubble = () => {};
for (let i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
  document.addEventListener("click", onCapture, true);
  document.addEventListener("click", onBubble);
  document.removeEventListener("click", never); // on pointerdown: removes a listener it never added
  document.removeEventListener("click", never); // on unmount: same no-op removal
  document.removeEventListener("click", onCapture, true);
  document.removeEventListener("click", onBubble);
}
console.log(count() - baseline); // 20, expected 0

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run the snippet above. Or, in a real app: open and close any Radix Dialog/Popover/DropdownMenu by clicking inside it (for example a Cancel button), 20 times.
2. In Chrome, run getEventListeners(document).click, or use CDP DOMDebugger.getEventListeners.

Expected Result

The SDK's per-target handler is removed when the last click listener on document goes away, so the count stays at the baseline.

Actual Result

Each cycle leaves one more capture-phase click listener on document, and all of them come from the SDK. In our app that was +20 after 20 dialog cycles closed by a click, and 0 when closed with Escape (no pointerdown).

Additional Context

The cause is in instrumentDOM (packages/browser-utils/src/instrumentation/dom.ts):

• The SDK keeps one handler and one refCount per event type on each target. The handler is registered with the options of whichever addEventListener call first found the count at 0.
• It is removed with the options of whichever removeEventListener call brings the count to <= 0.
• The count is decremented for every removeEventListener, even one for a listener that was never added. The browser treats that call as a no-op, but the SDK still counts it.

So when the first add used capture: true and the call that reaches zero is a bubble-phase no-op removal, originalRemoveEventListener(type, handler, undefined) misses the capture-phase handler. The bookkeeping is then deleted anyway, and the next add registers a new handler. DismissableLayer triggers this every time: it calls ownerDocument.removeEventListener("click", handleClickRef.current) on pointerdown and on unmount, even though handleClickRef.current is its initial no-op that was never added.

Because the handler is registered with the caller's full options object, a first caller's { once: true } or signal also applies to the SDK's handler. That can remove the handler while the bookkeeping still says it is attached.

We patched it locally by registering and removing with one normalized capture flag, which brought the growth to 0:

               handlerForType.handler = handler;
-              originalAddEventListener.call(this, type, handler, options);
+              handlerForType.capture = typeof options === "boolean" ? options : !!options?.capture;
+              originalAddEventListener.call(this, type, handler, handlerForType.capture);
 ...
-                  originalRemoveEventListener.call(this, type, handlerForType.handler, options);
+                  originalRemoveEventListener.call(this, type, handlerForType.handler, handlerForType.capture);

The refcount can still reach zero early because of the no-op removals. When that happens, the per-target handler is dropped while real listeners remain, so there is a small coverage gap but nothing accumulates. A complete fix would track which (listener, capture) pairs are actually registered. breadcrumbsIntegration({ dom: false }) is not a workaround, because Replay calls addClickKeypressInstrumentationHandler too.

Priority

React with 👍 to help prioritize this issue. Please use comments to provide useful context, avoiding +1 or me too, to help us triage it.

[linear-code]

JS-3787

[Lms24]

Thanks for reporting! I opened #24727 to fix this, along with a related refcount issue. Should be released with the next version of the SDK.