tooltip.stickOnContact has no effect in styled mode

Expected behaviour

With tooltip.stickOnContact: true, moving the pointer from a point onto the tooltip keeps the tooltip open, so its content can be read or clicked.

Actual behaviour

With chart.styledMode: true the option has no effect. The tooltip keeps pointer-events: none from css/highcharts.css, so the pointer never reaches it and the tooltip closes as soon as it leaves the point.

The option's only implementation is the pointerEvents assignment in Tooltip#getLabel (Core/Tooltip.js), which sits inside an if (!styledMode) branch. In styled mode that branch never runs, so the option is inert.

Live demo with steps to reproduce

https://jsfiddle.net/8ta91kqy/ — styledMode: true, tooltip: { stickOnContact: true }, loading the unversioned highcharts.js and css/highcharts.css, so it runs on the current release.

1. Hover the first point of any of the series.
2. Move the pointer towards the tooltip, away from the plot area.
3. The tooltip closes instead of staying open. It is never possible to move the pointer onto it.

Setting styledMode: false on the same configuration makes it behave as documented.

Measured locally on 12.2.0, plain Highcharts, no framework, changing only styledMode:

styledMode	computed pointer-events on .highcharts-tooltip	pointer reaches tooltip
true	none	no
false	auto	yes

Product version

Reproduced on the current CDN build and verified locally on 12.2.0.

Affected browser(s)

Chromium. Not browser specific — the tooltip is not hit-testable in any browser.

Note

This overlaps with #12394, closed as "not a bug" with the advice to set .highcharts-tooltip { pointer-events: auto } in CSS. That is a fair answer for user-authored tooltip styling. The difference here is that a built-in option silently does nothing, and the tooltip documentation now recommends stickOnContact as the remedy for the clickable-links case that #12394 was about:

"For clickable links inside the tooltip, use tooltip.stickOnContact. This keeps the tooltip visible when moving the pointer from the point to the tooltip content."

Either applying the option's pointer-events in styled mode as well, or noting the limitation on the API page, would remove the ambiguity.