What causes the “Native Collection has not been disposed” warning in Unity?

A NativeArray , NativeList , or other native container allocated with Allocator.Persistent or TempJob was never disposed, so Unity's leak detection flags it when the collection is garbage-collected.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix “A Native Collection has not been disposed, resulting in a memory leak” in Unity

Q: How do you fix the “Native Collection has not been disposed” warning in Unity?

Pair every native container allocation with a Dispose() — in OnDestroy, a finally block, or a using statement — and dispose after the job that uses it completes.

Quick answer: Pair every native container allocation with a Dispose() — in OnDestroy, a finally block, or a using statement — and dispose after the job that uses it completes.

Native containers live outside the managed heap, so the garbage collector will not clean them up for you. This warning is Unity telling you exactly that. Here is how to structure the lifetimes.

How to fix it

1. Match every allocation with Dispose

For fields, allocate in Awake/OnEnable and call Dispose() in OnDestroy/OnDisable. For locals, wrap in using var results = new NativeArray<float>(n, Allocator.TempJob);.

2. Dispose after the job completes

Call handle.Complete() before disposing, or use Dispose(handle) to schedule disposal that waits on the job — disposing a container a running job still uses throws.

3. Guard IsCreated on double paths

If multiple code paths can dispose, check if (array.IsCreated) array.Dispose(); to avoid disposing twice.

4. Turn on full leak detection to find the callsite

Enable Jobs > Leak Detection (Full Stack Traces) in the editor and the warning will name the exact allocation line instead of just the type.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Unity error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

The bug you can't reproduce isn't gone — it's just invisible until you capture it from the player's device.