How to clear media cache in Premiere Pro on Mac

What is the media cache?

When you import video and audio, Premiere creates versions of them it can read faster: peak files (.pek) for audio waveforms, conformed audio (.cfa) and other media cache files. They go to the Media Cache Files folder, and a database in the Media Cache folder links them to your clips. After Effects and Media Encoder use the same cache.

Deleted cache files are created again whenever a clip needs them, so clearing the cache is safe. By default Premiere never deletes them itself, so the cache grows with every project.

How to clear media cache in Premiere Pro

1. To delete all of the cache, restart Premiere and don’t open a project, or choose File › Close All Projects.
2. Choose Premiere › Settings › Media Cache.
3. Click Delete next to Remove Media Cache Files.
4. Choose Delete unused media cache files to remove only files made for source media that can no longer be found, or Delete all media cache files from the system to remove everything, and click OK.

Another way: hold Command while Premiere starts. In the Reset options dialog, select Clear media cache files.

Let Premiere clean up the cache automatically

In Premiere › Settings › Media Cache, the Media Cache Management section has three options. Do not delete cache files automatically is on by default. Automatically delete cache files older than removes files after a set time (90 days by default). Automatically delete oldest cache files when cache exceeds keeps the cache under a size limit (by default 10% of the disk it’s on).

The change works after you quit and reopen Premiere: about 10 minutes after launch it deletes the files that match, then repeats the cleanup every week. It removes only peak, conformed audio and media cache files (.pek, .cfa, .ims).

Where the cache is and how to delete it by hand

Unless you moved it in the Media Cache settings, the cache is in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common. Adobe’s way to clear it by hand:

1. Quit Premiere.
2. In Finder, choose Go › Go to Folder (Shift-Command-G), type ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common and press Return.

3. Move the contents of the Media Cache Files, Peak Files and Media Cache folders to the Trash.

4. Empty the Trash. The next time you open a project, Premiere needs time to rebuild the files.

In After Effects, the Disk panel of its settings has Clean Database & Cache. It removes cached files only for footage whose source files are no longer available, so connect the drives with your footage first. Empty Disk Cache in the same panel removes rendered preview frames.