--- title: Are you telling me a readonly property is wrecking my... description: A developer debugging performance issues in Letta Desktop discovered that accessing `scrollHeight` triggers a style and layout recalculation in the browser... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/are-you-telling-me-a-readonly-property-is-wrecking-my-performance--zlfcjoqop twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Are you telling me a readonly property is wrecking my performance? | daily.dev og:description: A developer debugging performance issues in Letta Desktop discovered that accessing `scrollHeight` triggers a style and layout recalculation in the browser... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/are-you-telling-me-a-readonly-property-is-wrecking-my-performance--zlfcjoqop og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/zLFCJoQOP.png og:image:alt: Are you telling me a readonly property is wrecking my performance? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Are you telling me a readonly property is wrecking my performance? **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer debugging performance issues in Letta Desktop discovered that accessing `scrollHeight` triggers a style and layout recalculation in the browser engine (forced reflow), not a simple property read. The Chromium source code confirms this: `scrollHeight` calls `UpdateStyleAndLayoutForNode` every time it is accessed. The fix was to avoid computing a precise scroll target and instead set `scrollTop` to a large static number, letting the browser clamp it naturally. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Browser Hates Surprises – Frontend Masters Blog](https://daily.dev/posts/the-browser-hates-surprises-frontend-masters-blog-ag6bga3uc) · Frontend Masters · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Avoid layout shift with scrollbar-gutter: stable](https://daily.dev/posts/avoid-layout-shift-with-scrollbar-gutter-stable-lnzlqyzdc) · RUBYLAND · 10 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#performance](https://daily.dev/tags/performance), [#dom](https://daily.dev/tags/dom), [#chromium](https://daily.dev/tags/chromium) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/are-you-telling-me-a-readonly-property-is-wrecking-my-performance--zlfcjoqop) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Are you telling me a readonly property is wrecking my performance?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/are-you-telling-me-a-readonly-property-is-wrecking-my-performance--zlfcjoqop","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/are-you-telling-me-a-readonly-property-is-wrecking-my-performance--zlfcjoqop"},"datePublished":"2026-07-13T07:23:56.197Z","dateModified":"2026-07-13T07:24:13.070Z","description":"A developer debugging performance issues in Letta Desktop discovered that accessing `scrollHeight` triggers a style and layout recalculation in the browser...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--qPvKM23u--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2009","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--qPvKM23u--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2009","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/are-you-telling-me-a-readonly-property-is-wrecking-my-performance--zlfcjoqop","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"performance,dom,chromium","timeRequired":"PT2M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Are you telling me a readonly property is wrecking my performance?"}]} ```