Return list from async/await method

In addition to @takemyoxygen's answer the convention of having a function name that ends in Async is that this function is truly asynchronous. I.e. it does not start a new thread and it doesn't simply call Task.Run. If that is all the code that is in your function, it will be better to remove it completely and simply have:

List<Item> list = await Task.Run(() => manager.GetList());

You need to correct your code to wait for the list to be downloaded:

List<Item> list = await GetListAsync();

Also, make sure that the method, where this code is located, has async modifier.

The reason why you get this error is that GetListAsync method returns a Task<T> which is not a completed result. As your list is downloaded asynchronously (because of Task.Run()) you need to "extract" the value from the task using the await keyword.

If you remove Task.Run(), you list will be downloaded synchronously and you don't need to use Task, async or await.

One more suggestion: you don't need to await in GetListAsync method if the only thing you do is just delegating the operation to a different thread, so you can shorten your code to the following:

private Task<List<Item>> GetListAsync(){
    return Task.Run(() => manager.GetList());
}

you can use the following

private async Task<List<string>> GetItems()
{
    return await Task.FromResult(new List<string> 
    { 
      "item1", "item2", "item3" 
    });
}

Works for me:

List<Item> list = Task.Run(() => manager.GetList()).Result;

in this way it is not necessary to mark the method with async in the call.