Disabling Components C#

Enabling a component works just as you say:

GetComponent().enabled = false;

but if I read you right you want to do that to a different object. All you need then is the object reference. There are several ways of getting one.

You can use Find like this:

GameObject.Find("myDesiredObject").GetComponent().enabled = false;

This can work, however it is very costly in terms of cpu usage. You can get away with doing this if this line is only called once, once in a while like as the result of pressing a button. If you are calling this line in an Update or an IEnumerator the penalty is significant especially on mobile.

If you've preplaced your target object in your scene, why not just reference it through a public variable?

public GameObject myTarget

void OnMyEvent(){ myTarget.GetComponent().enabled = false }

Then if you haven't placed your target object in your scene and you've not done anything to reference it before hand, a sure fire way of getting to it with the smallest possible penalty is by getting to it via an object tag. Make a new tag, and assign your target object with that tag in it's prefab. Then do this to call it:

GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("myTag").GetComponent().enabled = false;

You can have dozens of tags and they make it easy to work with collections of objects. Say you had a smart bomb that blows up all your enemies. Just have a tag called "enemy" assign enemy objects that tag and do this:

foreach (GameObject enemy in GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("enemy"){

Destroy(enemy); }

So this is a really old post, but maybe I can help other people coming to this question.

The original poster's problem was that he needed to reference a gameObject other that the one the script is on. remember when using GetComponent<T>() on it's own, you are referencing a member property from the MonoBehaviour class, which knows what GameObject you are looking for(The Game object your script is attached to).

He could do this with any of the GameObject.Find methods. or even better yet, create a public GameObject otherGameObject then you can drag and drop another gameobject from the hierarchy or a prefab into the field in the inspector.

It's also important to note that the Component class does not have an enabled property to toggle. This is because some components cannot be disabled(Like the transform component). However most components that can be disabled (Lights, Cameras, Colliders, etc.) are actually Behaviors (Including your own custom MonoBehaviours) and Behaviors do have a enabled property.

A common use case: You have a script that will turn certain components on for the local player in a networked game.

 using UnityEngine;
 using UnityEngine.Networking;
 
 public class LocalPlayerEnabler : NetworkBehaviour
 {
     public Behaviour[] behavioursToTurnOn;
 
     void Start()
     {
         if (!isLocalPlayer)
         {
             return;
         }
 
         foreach (var behaviour in behavioursToTurnOn)
         {
             behaviour.enabled = true;
         }
     }
 }

You need a reference to the other GameObject. The easiest, but not the most efficient, is to use GameObject.Find with the name of the GamObject as a parameter. There are other ways to get a reference to other objects without using GameObject.Find, but I think you should look into those if you ever find your game's frame rates dropping.

You need a reference to other object.

 otherObject.GetComponent<Camera>().enabled = false;

But this can get confusing spaghetti code really fast so be careful!

try using GameObject.Find("Your object name").GetComponent().enabled = false;