JetBrains Rider 2024.3 Help

Code inspection: Method return value is never used (non-private accessibility)

This inspection reports public methods that are called somewhere in the solution, but none of the calls use its return value. This often indicates that the method is not functioning as intended.

If the method does not change the program state, it might be redundant, and you may consider removing it. Otherwise, you can make the method void, which will make its intent clearer.

For the solution-wide inspection to work, you need to enable at least one of the following:

  • Simplified global usage checking: select Show unused non-private type members when solution-wide analysis is off on the Editor | Inspection Settings page of JetBrains Rider settings Ctrl+Alt+S.

  • Solution-wide analysis: select Enable solution-wide analysis on the Editor | Inspection Settings page of JetBrains Rider settings Ctrl+Alt+S.

Note that even if the reported method has no direct usages in your solution, there could be cases where it is used indirectly — for example, via reflection — or it could just be designed as public API. In all those cases, you would want to suppress the usage-checking inspection for the method in one of the following ways:

Last modified: 06 June 2024