You can use the loaded Asset to instantiate using Unity's built-in instantiation methods, which does not increment the Addressables ref-count. If the load succeeds, the resulting AsyncOperationHandle struct contains the Asset in the. That operation has a ref-count of three for the corresponding Asset. If you call LoadAssetAsync three times with the same address, you will get three different instances of an AsyncOperationHandle struct back, all referencing the same underlying operation. Every time the load call executes, it adds one to the ref-count for each Asset loaded. This loads the Asset into memory without instantiating it. This is not deterministic as it can be affected by build order. If you provide a key that matches multiple entries (such as a widely used label) the method will load the first match it finds to the given key. Note: LoadAssetAsync is intended for use with keys that map to single entries. To load an Asset, use Addressables.LoadAssetAsync (single asset) or Addressables.LoadAssetsAsync (multiple assets).

For example, during Scene creation (described below) the load returns a AsyncOperationHandle, which you can release via this returned handle, or by keeping up with the handle.Result (in this case, a SceneInstance).

In all cases, however, the release method can either take the loaded Asset, or an operation handle returned by the load. How you do so depends on your Asset types and load methods. When working with Addressable Assets, the primary way to ensure proper memory management is to mirror your load and unload calls correctly. Memory management Mirroring load and unload

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