At what point in the ARC process does the reference counter increase?

The reference count in ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) increases when a new strong reference to an object is assigned. For example, when a new variable or property referencing the object is created, or when the object is added to a collection with strong references. ARC automatically increments the reference count to track the number of active owners. When references are removed or set to nil, the count decreases, and when it reaches zero, the object is deallocated.