`aria/` selector slowness in finding elements

I have experienced significant delays of 8 seconds when finding elements using the aria/ selectors. I thought I would share my findings here to see if others are experiencing the same issue and to contribute to solutions.

For example, in the code below, the the aria/ selector takes 8 seconds vs 103.8ms when using the span= selector

Here's the code to reproduce this issue:

import { browser, expect } from '@wdio/globals'

describe('selectors', () => {
  it('link text', async () => {
    await browser.url('/stackoverflow.html')

    console.time('=questions');
    const link = await $('=Questions')
    console.timeEnd('=questions');
    await expect(link).toHaveText('Questions')
  })

  it('element text', async () => {
    await browser.url('/stackoverflow.html')

    let link = await $('span=Questions')
    await expect(link).toHaveText('Questions')
  })

  it('aria', async () => {
    await browser.url('/stackoverflow.html')

    console.time('aria');
    const elem = await $('aria/Questions')
    console.timeEnd('aria');
    await expect(elem).toHaveText('Questions')
  })
})

This issue can also be reproduced in https://github.com/fpereira1/example-recipes/pull/1/files

When I look deeper into how the aria/ selectors work, I see that a few of xpath queries are taking the longest as seen below:

• .//*[@aria-labelledby=(//*[normalize-space(text()) = "Questions"]/@id)]: 3411.576904296875 ms
• .//*[@aria-describedby=(//*[normalize-space(text()) = "Questions"]/@id)]: 3430.876953125 ms
• .//*[@aria-label = "Questions"]: 0.373046875 ms
• .//input[@id = (//label[normalize-space() = "Questions"]/@for)]: 2.85400390625 ms
• .//textarea[@id = (//label[normalize-space() = "Questions"]/@for)]: 2.350830078125 ms
• .//input[ancestor::label[normalize-space(text()) = "Questions"]]: 0.072021484375 ms
• .//textarea[ancestor::label[normalize-space(text()) = "Questions"]]: 0.072998046875 ms
• .//input[@placeholder="Questions"]: 0.070068359375 ms
• .//textarea[@placeholder="Questions"]: 0.069091796875 ms
• .//input[@aria-placeholder="Questions"]: 0.068115234375 ms
• .//textarea[@aria-placeholder="Questions"]: 0.070068359375 ms
• .//*[not(self::label)][@title="Questions"]: 0.844970703125 ms
• .//img[@alt="Questions"]: 0.0771484375 ms
• .//*[not(self::label)][normalize-space(text()) = "Questions"]: 1.152099609375 ms

Can anything be done to improve performance here, or are all of those xpath queries necessary?

If there's a known performance impact when using aria/, it would be helpful for the documentation to reflect this. Many teams (ours included) have adopted aria/ selectors assuming they are best practice, and while they are in terms of maintainability, they currently come with a significant performance penalty.

WebdriverIO Version

9.1.2

Node.js Version

22.16.0

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues