useRef

When dealing with deeply nested components
When managing complex component state
useRef is not a good fit for managing complex component state that should affect rendering, because changing ref.current does not trigger a re-render. State that drives the UI should usually be managed with useState or useReducer, while useRef is useful for DOM refs and mutable values that do not need to trigger renders.
When optimizing server-side rendering
When only static references to DOM elements are needed