the search bar opens with a noticeable delay when triggered — both when pressing "/" to open it and when clicking it with the mouse. The search window takes a beat to appear rather than opening instantly.

This appears to be Safari-specific. The same action in Chrome opens the search bar with no perceptible lag, so it looks like a browser-specific rendering or event-handling issue rather than a general performance problem.

Safari Version 26.4, macOS Tahoe 26.4.1