[combobox] Fix cancellation when preserving the filter after selection

[atomiks]

Fixes two cancellation bugs that could leave stale filter text after selecting an item in multiple mode and later reopening the popup:

• A canceled selection-triggered input-clear was recorded as completed before the cancellation check. This suppressed the cleanup clear when the popup unmounted, so the next open could remain filtered by the previous query.
• When reopening interrupted the close animation, the clear standing in for unmount cleanup inherited the reopening gesture. This made it indistinguishable from a selection-triggered clear, so consumer cancellation logic could cancel the cleanup too.

The runtime changes ensure that only committed clears are recorded and that cleanup clears carry no gesture event.

We have two options to support keeping filter text in multiple mode in v1:

1. keepFilterText prop ([combobox] Add keepFilterText prop for repeated selections #4360), which is conditional on multiple (not great)
2. isItemPress eventDetails property for onInputChange (input-clear blocks this in v1)

For No. 2, to keep the typed filter after selection, cancel the flagged clear in onInputValueChange (input inside the popup) or the item-press close in onOpenChange (input outside).

Why input-clear should change in v2

input-clear is the only effect-based reason in an otherwise cause-based union (item-press, escape-key, clear-press, …). The effect is redundant because onInputValueChange already receives the new value, while the cause is what consumers actually need to discriminate on. isItemPress bridges this additively since v1 reasons are frozen (#4348).

In v2, we should replace input-clear with cause-based reasons and drop isItemPress.

[pkg-pr-new]

• base-ui-tanstack-start

• vite-css-base-ui-example

  pnpm add https://pkg.pr.new/mui/base-ui/@base-ui/react@5362
  

  pnpm add https://pkg.pr.new/mui/base-ui/@base-ui/utils@5362
  

commit: 9781f50

[code-infra-dashboard]

Bundle size

Bundle	Parsed size	Gzip size
@base-ui/react	🔺+158B(+0.04%)	🔺+59B(+0.04%)

Details of bundle changes

Performance

Total duration: 1,310.36 ms +35.29 ms^(+2.8%) | Renders: 76 ⁽⁺⁰⁾ | Paint: 2,072.80 ms +70.30 ms^(+3.5%)

Test	Duration	Renders
Checkbox mount (500 instances)	97.69 ms 🔺+25.30 ms(+35.0%)	1 (+0)
Slider mount (300 instances)	132.89 ms 🔺+23.75 ms(+21.8%)	2 (+0)
Tooltip mount (300 contained roots)	63.65 ms 🔺+12.12 ms(+23.5%)	1 (+0)
Scroll Area mount (300 instances)	86.81 ms ▼-22.01 ms(-20.2%)	3 (+0)

11 tests within noise — details

Metric alarms

Test	Metric	Change
Checkbox mount (500 instances)	bench:paint	🔺 +32.08 ms
Tooltip mount (300 contained roots)	bench:paint	🔺 +20.55 ms

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[atomiks]

@claude review low

[github-actions]

PR review

The two cancellation fixes in setInputValue/setOpen hold up under tracing: recording hadInputClearRef only after the cancel check, and issuing the reopen cleanup clear with no gesture event and no isItemPress, both do what the description claims. One side effect of widening the reopen guard is worth a look before merge — setCloseQuery(null) now also runs when the input is outside the popup, but queryChangedAfterOpen is not reset there, which narrows the list on an interrupted-exit reopen in single mode. Nothing here is merge-blocking. Reviewed at low effort, so this pass covers runtime correctness only (tests, simplifications, and docs prose were out of scope).

Bugs (1)

1. 🟠 Reopening during the exit animation now filters a single-select list down to just the selected item

Location: packages/react/src/combobox/root/AriaCombobox.tsx:636

if (nextOpen && closeQuery !== null) {
  const isInputChange = eventDetails.reason === REASONS.inputChange;
  const clearsPendingInput =
    !isInputChange && inputInsidePopup && !inline && inputValue !== '';

  if (!isInputChange && (clearsPendingInput || inputValue === '')) {
    setQueryChangedAfterOpen(false);
  }

  setCloseQuery(null);
  ...

The outer guard lost its inputInsidePopup && !inline condition, so setCloseQuery(null) now also executes when the input is rendered outside the popup. closeQuery is set on close for both placements (setCloseQuery(query) at lines 663 and 672 is gated only on !inline), so this is a new code path, not a no-op.

For single mode with the input outside the popup, the reset of queryChangedAfterOpen does not fire on that path: clearsPendingInput is false (not inputInsidePopup) and inputValue is the label setSelectedValue just wrote, so it is non-empty. The result is closeQuery === null and queryChangedAfterOpen === true, which makes query fall back to the full selected label while shouldBypassFiltering (line 241, which requires !queryChangedAfterOpen) stays disabled.

Before this PR the block was skipped entirely for outside-popup inputs, so query stayed frozen at the previously typed text. Neither old nor new behavior matches the canonical post-unmount reopen, where handleUnmount resets queryChangedAfterOpen and shouldBypassFiltering shows the full list — but the change makes the visible result strictly narrower.

Failure scenario: Single-select combobox with the input outside the popup and an exit animation. Type ap, click Apple (popup starts animating out, input now reads Apple), then click the trigger again before the animation finishes. The list reopens showing only Apple instead of the full item list. Previously it showed the items matching ap; after a fully completed close it correctly shows everything.

Fix: Also reset queryChangedAfterOpen on the outside-popup path when the input reflects the current selection rather than a surviving filter — e.g. extend the condition with (!inputInsidePopup && inputValue === selectedLabelString). A blanket !inputInsidePopup reset would be simpler but reintroduces exactly the hazard the new comment at line 643 warns about: after an Escape close with no selection the typed filter is still visible in the outside input, and clearing the flag would let the items sync at line 1111 overwrite it with the selected label.

Verdict

Approve after nits - the cancellation fixes are correct; the only issue is a narrow interrupted-exit-animation regression in single-select filtering introduced by widening the reopen guard.

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🤖 Review generated with Claude Code · low effort · 20 turns · 5m15s · $1.34 · run