Sentry is logging massive amount of events during UITextSelectionInteraction._handleMultiTapGesture and not sure how to interpret

[pinarol]

Sentry says UITextSelectionInteraction._handleMultiTapGesture takes 3.95 min and the trace shows hundreds of short DB operations on main thread.

I'd appreciate if you help me interpret this.

• Does this actually mean UITextSelectionInteraction._handleMultiTapGesture is the "trigger" for all these db operations? Or do those spans fall under UITextSelectionInteraction._handleMultiTapGesture just because they happen to occur at the same time in the main thread so Sentry puts them into the same transaction by mistake or by a coincidence?

• All the spans under UITextSelectionInteraction._handleMultiTapGesture take super small amounts of time in the main thread, so it seems individual operations are not concerning but the their sum is the problem. Is that really an observable issue from a user point of view? Does this cause the UI to slow down or freeze?

• There's an empty jump between the selected row and the row before that. How should that be interpreted? Are there missing spans that somehow failed to be reported?

Thank you in advance.

[philipphofmann]

@pinarol. Totally fair callout — User Interaction Transactions aren’t meant to represent the actual gesture duration (so it doesn’t mean your multi-tap gesture took 4 minutes 😄).

They’re mostly a container/placeholder to attach auto-generated spans to. The SDK starts the transaction, keeps it open via a timer, and then adds spans (like DB spans) as they happen, which is the important part.

This feature is a bit confusing and we’d like to replace it with a better alternative long-term. If you don’t want it, you can disable it — docs here: https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/apple/guides/ios/tracing/instrumentation/automatic-instrumentation/#user-interaction-tracing

[pinarol]

Thank you for clarifying this!