What's the difference between `useRef` and `createRef`?

Question

I was going through the hooks documentation when I stumbled upon useRef.

Looking at their example…

function TextInputWithFocusButton() {
  const inpu         


        

Answer 1

createRef always returns a new ref, which you'd generally store as a field on a class component's instance. useRef returns the same ref upon every render of a functional component's instance. This is what allows the state of the ref to persist between renders, despite you not explictly storing it anywhere.

In your second example, the ref would be re-created upon every render.