diff --git a/test/shell.d/runtime-smoke-test.sh b/test/shell.d/runtime-smoke-test.sh
index d6006b73..321bbbdb 100755
--- a/test/shell.d/runtime-smoke-test.sh
+++ b/test/shell.d/runtime-smoke-test.sh
@@ -230,18 +230,23 @@ for panel_id in omarchy.audio omarchy.bluetooth omarchy.monitor omarchy.network
 done
 pass "direct panel IPC opens and closes default panels"
 
-# Each widget registers its IPC handler once while the shell starts. A second
-# registration for the same target means two instances of that widget were
-# live at once, which is what duplicate component loads produced: every sync
-# pass that ran while a widget's asynchronous load was still in flight started
-# a second load, and swapping a slot's component builds the replacement before
-# dropping the original. Checked before the reload below, which rebuilds
-# widgets by design.
-if grep -q "another handler is registered for target" "$log"; then
+# Each widget registers its IPC handler once per bar, and the bar is
+# instantiated once per screen, so Quickshell reports one collision per screen
+# past the first. Anything beyond that is two instances on the same screen —
+# the shape duplicate component loads produced, where a sync pass that ran
+# while a widget's asynchronous load was still in flight started a second one.
+# Checked before the reload below, which rebuilds widgets by design.
+screens=$(hyprctl -j monitors 2>/dev/null | jq 'length' 2>/dev/null || true)
+[[ $screens =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]] && (( screens > 0 )) || screens=1
+# No matches is the good case, and pipefail would otherwise abort the run.
+worst=$(grep -oE "another handler is registered for target [a-z.-]+" "$log" |
+  sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{print $1}' || true)
+worst=${worst:-0}
+if (( worst > screens - 1 )); then
   grep "another handler is registered for target" "$log" | sed 's/^/  /' | head -20 >&2
-  fail_with_log "each widget registers its IPC handler once while starting"
+  fail_with_log "each widget registers its IPC handler once per screen (saw $worst for $screens screen(s))"
 fi
-pass "each widget registers its IPC handler once while starting"
+pass "each widget registers its IPC handler once per screen"
 
 HOME="$test_home" OMARCHY_PATH="$test_root" PATH="$ROOT/bin:$PATH" "$ROOT/bin/omarchy-bar-plugin" remove omarchy.audio