How to avoid target.hasPointerCapture is not a function when testing Radix UI (shadcn) components with Vitest + userEvent?

Question

I'm testing components built with shadcn/ui, which uses Radix UI under the hood. When running UI interaction tests using Vitest and @testing-library/user-event, I keep getting the following error:

target.hasPointerCapture is not a function

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

Changed the test environment to happy-dom in vitest.config.mts
Initialized userEvent with pointerEventsCheck: 0:

const user = userEvent.setup({ pointerEventsCheck: 0 });

The error still occurs.

The only workaround that (I found) seems to work is polyfilling the missing DOM APIs in vitest config :

beforeAll(() => {
  if (!Element.prototype.hasPointerCapture) {
    Element.prototype.hasPointerCapture = vi.fn().mockReturnValue(false);
  }
  if (!Element.prototype.setPointerCapture) {
    Element.prototype.setPointerCapture = vi.fn();
  }
  if (!Element.prototype.releasePointerCapture) {
    Element.prototype.releasePointerCapture = vi.fn();
  }
  if (!Element.prototype.scrollIntoView) {
    Element.prototype.scrollIntoView = vi.fn();
  }
});

This centralizes the missing DOM APIs so I don’t have to repeat them in every test file.

Question: Is there any other approach (other than adding these manual polyfills) to avoid hasPointerCapture–related errors when testing Radix UI / shadcn components with Vitest and userEvent?

Palladio · Accepted Answer · 2025-10-23 09:25:36Z

0

I got an answer:

That one happens because Radix uses pointer events, and happy-dom/jsdom don’t fully support them.

your workaround adding those small polyfills in your setup file is totally fine.

everyone using Radix or shadcn in Vitest does something similar.

If you ever want to avoid polyfills, the only real alternative is running your tests in a real browser (like Vitest browser mode or Playwright), but that’s heavier.

answered Oct 23 at 9:25

Palladio

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Community Oct 23 at 9:35

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