Refs are used to help components "remember" some information without triggering new renders. It's intentionally mutable and not something React tracks. When a piece of information is only needed by event handlers and changing it doesn't require a re-render using a ref may be more efficient. Broadly you should not be reading refs during rendering. The most common use case for using refs is to access a DOM element such as `<div ref = {myref}>`. React will then put the DOM element into `myRef.current`. --- https://react.dev/learn/referencing-values-with-refs