Question Sprite loading efficiency

Let's say I have 10 buttons, and for each of them, I assigned them the same sprite image by dragging the image into each of the button's inspector panel.

During app runtime, does Unity load the same image into memory 10 times or does it just load it once and reference it the other 9 times? I'm assuming it does the latter but I don't know for sure. Or should I just manage it myself with Resources.Load() through a script?

 

The one sprite is loaded into memory as a dependency of the prefab or scene is loaded as well, and all the

UnityEngine.Object

references are pointing to the same asset. Kinda has to work this way as comparing equality between Unity objects would break.

The only time assets get duplicated is when Addressables or Asset Bundles are involved and aren't used properly.

 

Is that only for when we're assigning sprites via the inspector? What about calls to Resources.Load() on the same asset multiple times? Do I have to manage redundant loads myself?

 

No you're still getting the same asset. Once again, duplicating the asset would cause equality checks to fail and be a nightmare for all sorts of reasons. Not to mention a pointless waste of resources.

Even with addressables, multiple asset references pointing to the same address being loaded will all return the same asset.