feat(eui): add repositionOnScroll to componentDefaults

[weronikaolejniczak]

Summary

Add both EuiPopover and EuiToolTip's repositionOnScroll to componentDefaults.

Why are we making this change?

Resolves #8984

We had a short conversation about this with Anton and we think that the componentDefaults is the first nice step.

What repositionOnScroll does is it fixes EuiPopover / EuiToolTip positioning on anchors that are position: fixed. That is not always the behavior that we want. It adds listeners and recalculates the position so it isn't without a cost either.

That being said, we have a logic in the tooltip that makes only one be displayed at a time. And usually, popovers do not display at once (or display briefly at once).

The short-term proposal would be:

1. Switch the repositionOnScroll to true by default.
2. Build the @elastic/eui locally.
3. Test within Kibana to see if there is a significant performance overhead or behavior issues (intuition tells me - there won't be).
4. Add EuiPopover and EuiToolTip repositionOnScroll to componentDefaults.
5. Release and update in Kibana.
6. Using EuiProvider, pass the feature flag to repositionOnScroll in componentDefaults. This way, we will have enough time to test the result while not causing potential regression to existing functionality.

Estimation: up to 2 days

Because repositionOnScroll affects the component behavior I would not do it globally within EUI. That being said, through componentDefaults that we hook up to the feature flag for the new grid layout, that might be good!

The long-term proposal would be:

1. Redoing our overlays to not be portaled.
2. Provide better composition (likely, not wrapping the triggers).

We are making this change for the grid layout initiative in Kibana.

See more details here: elastic/kibana#240882

Screenshots #

EuiPopover

Kapture.2025-10-27.at.18.01.06.mp4

EuiToolTip

Kapture.2025-10-27.at.18.50.02.mp4

Impact to users

🟢 This is not a breaking change. It's an enhancement.

QA

Specific checklist

• Verify that EuiPopover reposition on scroll works as expected in the testing story
• Verify that EuiToolTip reposition on scroll works as expected in the testing story

General checklist

• Browser QA
  • Checked in both light and dark modes
  • Checked in both MacOS and Windows high contrast modes
    • (emulate forced colors if you do not have access to a Windows machine.)
  • Checked in mobile
  • Checked in Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox
  • Checked for accessibility including keyboard-only and screenreader modes
• Docs site QA
  • Added documentation
  • Props have proper autodocs (using @default if default values are missing) and playground toggles
  • Checked Code Sandbox works for any docs examples
• Code quality checklist
  • Added or updated jest and cypress tests
  • Updated visual regression tests
• Release checklist
  • A changelog entry exists and is marked appropriately
  • If applicable, added the breaking change issue label (and filled out the breaking change checklist)
  • If the changes unblock an issue in a different repo, smoke tested carefully (see Testing EUI features in Kibana ahead of time)
• Designer checklist
  • If applicable, file an issue to update EUI's Figma library with any corresponding UI changes. (This is an internal repo, if you are external to Elastic, ask a maintainer to submit this request)

[Dosant]

I tested the change in Kibana, and it seems to be working well! 👍

[weronikaolejniczak]

@mgadewoll ready for re-review 🙏🏻

[weronikaolejniczak]

@mgadewoll thank you for all the suggestions to make the implementation cleaner and improve test quality 🙏🏻 I applied all of them and I re-tested but I'd appreciate a test from you as well. Let me know if you have any more thoughts!

[mgadewoll]

🟢 The changes LGTM and the usage in popover and tooltip work as expected. Nice work! 🎉

⏰ Friendly reminder to revert the test commits.

[elasticmachine]

💚 Build Succeeded

• Buildkite Build
• Commit: 7a4fcad
• Documentation website
• Storybook

History

• 💚 Build #1796 succeeded 0e07439
• 💚 Build #1786 succeeded 9594536
• 💚 Build #1777 succeeded 2db21e8
• 💚 Build #1775 succeeded 0051a3f
• 💚 Build #1757 succeeded 6bc287b
• 💚 Build #1756 succeeded a88ed9b

cc @weronikaolejniczak

[elasticmachine]

💚 Build Succeeded

• Buildkite Build
• Commit: 7a4fcad

History

• 💔 Build #5105 failed 9594536
• 💔 Build #5098 failed 2db21e8
• 💚 Build #5080 succeeded 6bc287b
• 💚 Build #5073 succeeded ecaec4d
• 💚 Build #5059 succeeded 4446019
• 💚 Build #5057 succeeded e7658a6

cc @weronikaolejniczak