UI: Migrate Select from Popper.js tooltip to react-aria overlay

[Sidnioulz]

Caution

Must base onto next once the IconButton branch is merged! ⚠️⚠️⚠️

What I did

This PR is part of the work done on WithTooltip replacement. It specifically addresses Select's use of WithTooltip.

Select's menu is not a tooltip, it's an interactive popover with a listbox role. We already have KB nav and aria markup working, all we were missing was:

• A popover placement logic that doesn't depend on Popper.js
• A hook to close the popover when clicking outside of its content

The PR uses low-level react-aria hooks to achieve this.

The miminalist popover inside Select.tsx will likely not be reusable. We have higher-level primitives for most use cases, but here I needed something very low-level to keep the existing KB nav logic in place.

Checklist for Contributors

Testing

The changes in this PR are covered in the following automated tests:

• stories
• unit tests
• integration tests
• end-to-end tests

Manual testing

1. Run local instance
2. Go to http://localhost:6006/?path=/story/select-component--mouse-selection-multi
3. Play around with the stories

Documentation

N/A

Checklist for Maintainers

• When this PR is ready for testing, make sure to add ci:normal, ci:merged or ci:daily GH label to it to run a specific set of sandboxes. The particular set of sandboxes can be found in code/lib/cli-storybook/src/sandbox-templates.ts

• Make sure this PR contains one of the labels below:

  Available labels

  • bug: Internal changes that fixes incorrect behavior.
  • maintenance: User-facing maintenance tasks.
  • dependencies: Upgrading (sometimes downgrading) dependencies.
  • build: Internal-facing build tooling & test updates. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • cleanup: Minor cleanup style change. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • documentation: Documentation only changes. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • feature request: Introducing a new feature.
  • BREAKING CHANGE: Changes that break compatibility in some way with current major version.
  • other: Changes that don't fit in the above categories.

🦋 Canary release

This PR does not have a canary release associated. You can request a canary release of this pull request by mentioning the @storybookjs/core team here.

core team members can create a canary release here or locally with gh workflow run --repo storybookjs/storybook canary-release-pr.yml --field pr=<PR_NUMBER>

Greptile Summary

Updated On: 2025-09-03 17:34:52 UTC

This PR migrates the Select component from using WithTooltipPure (based on Popper.js) to react-aria overlay hooks for better semantic correctness and accessibility. The Select component's dropdown menu was previously implemented as a tooltip, but semantically it should be an interactive popover with a listbox role.

The main changes include:

1. New dependency: Adds react-aria-components@^1.12.1 to the core package to access overlay positioning and interaction hooks

2. Custom MinimalistPopover component: Replaces WithTooltipPure with a new component that uses three react-aria hooks:

   • useOverlayPosition for popover placement without Popper.js
   • useInteractOutside for handling clicks outside the popover
   • useOverlay for focus management and dismissal behavior

3. Improved ARIA semantics: Updates role assignments so single-select uses button role and multi-select uses combobox role, following proper accessibility guidelines

4. Enhanced keyboard navigation: Maintains existing keyboard shortcuts while adding Tab key handling to close the popover

5. Visual consistency: Adds borderRadius: 2 to focused select options for consistent styling

The migration preserves all existing functionality including complex multi-select logic, keyboard navigation, and ARIA markup while moving to a more semantically correct and accessible implementation. The new MinimalistPopover is intentionally low-level and non-reusable to maintain the existing keyboard navigation behavior.

Confidence score: 4/5

• This PR introduces significant architectural changes but follows established patterns and maintains existing functionality
• Score reflects the complexity of the migration and potential edge cases with the new react-aria dependency
• Pay close attention to the Select component implementation and test the popover positioning thoroughly

[greptile-apps]

_{4 files reviewed, 1 comment}

_{Edit Code Review Bot Settings | Greptile}

[nx-cloud]

View your CI Pipeline Execution ↗ for commit 7b31b8c

Command	Status	Duration	Result
nx run-many -t check -c production --parallel=7	✅ Succeeded	1m 16s	View ↗
nx run-many -t build -c production --parallel=3	✅ Succeeded	3m 38s	View ↗

---

☁️ Nx Cloud last updated this comment at 2025-09-05 12:56:04 UTC

[ghengeveld]

Not sure why CI didn't run. Code looks good, but I'd like to see how the Chromatic snapshots turn out. @MichaelArestad should probably take this for a spin as well.

[Sidnioulz]

Not sure why CI didn't run. Code looks good, but I'd like to see how the Chromatic snapshots turn out. @MichaelArestad should probably take this for a spin as well.

I was hoping you wouldn't review this one so quickly, it's based on the IconButton/Select branch and I hadn't finished fixing all the E2E and unit tests on that. It should be green soon enough :)

[storybook-pr-benchmarking]

Package Benchmarks

^{Commit: 1e18255, ran on 4 September 2025 at 14:06:02 UTC}

The following packages have significant changes to their size or dependencies:

storybook

	Before	After	Difference
Dependency count	48	48	0
Self size	30.78 MB	32.57 MB	🚨 +1.79 MB 🚨
Dependency size	17.61 MB	17.61 MB	0 B
Bundle Size Analyzer	Link	Link

@storybook/cli

	Before	After	Difference
Dependency count	204	204	0
Self size	879 KB	879 KB	0 B
Dependency size	81.74 MB	83.53 MB	🚨 +1.79 MB 🚨
Bundle Size Analyzer	Link	Link

@storybook/codemod

	Before	After	Difference
Dependency count	173	173	0
Self size	35 KB	35 KB	🚨 +42 B 🚨
Dependency size	76.81 MB	78.60 MB	🚨 +1.79 MB 🚨
Bundle Size Analyzer	Link	Link

create-storybook

	Before	After	Difference
Dependency count	49	49	0
Self size	1.52 MB	1.52 MB	0 B
Dependency size	48.39 MB	50.18 MB	🚨 +1.79 MB 🚨
Bundle Size Analyzer	node	node