After Effects & Premiere Pro Are Eating Your Mac's Storage. Here's How to Fix It.
If you edit video on a Mac, you've probably noticed your storage disappearing. A 256 GB MacBook can fill up from a single project. Even a 1 TB Mac Mini will struggle if you work with 4K or higher.
The culprit: Adobe's media cache system. It's designed to make playback smoother, but it never cleans up after itself.
Where Adobe hides its cache
| App | Cache location | Typical size |
|---|---|---|
| Premiere Pro | ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files/ | 10–80 GB |
| After Effects | ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/After Effects/ | 5–50 GB |
| After Effects Disk Cache | ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache/ | 10–100 GB |
| Photoshop scratch | /tmp/ + scratch disk | 2–20 GB |
| Media Encoder | Shares Premiere's media cache | Included above |
Combined, these can easily hit 50–200 GB on a busy editing machine.
How to clear Adobe cache manually
Premiere Pro
- Open Premiere Pro
- Edit → Preferences → Media Cache
- Click "Delete" next to "Remove Media Cache Files"
- Select "Delete all media cache files from the system"
After Effects
- Open After Effects
- Edit → Purge → All Memory & Disk Cache
- Also: Preferences → Media & Disk Cache → Clean Database & Cache
Nuclear option (delete cache folders directly)
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/Media\ Cache\ Files/* rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/Media\ Cache/* rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/After\ Effects/*
This is safe. You'll just need to re-conform media when you reopen projects (Premiere rebuilds peak files and indexes automatically).
Other creative apps that hoard cache
DaVinci Resolve
Cache lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/. Resolve's optimized media and render cache can use 20–50 GB. Clear via Project → Project Settings → Master Settings → Working Folders → Delete Optimized Media.
Final Cut Pro
FCP stores render files inside the library bundle. Right-click your library → "Delete Generated Library Files" to reclaim space. Can save 10–30 GB per library.
Logic Pro
Audio files, bounces, and freeze files in ~/Music/Logic/. Check Project → Clean Up for unused audio.
Prevent cache from filling your disk again
- Set a cache size limit in Premiere: Preferences → Media Cache → set max to 20–50 GB
- Move cache to an external SSD: In Preferences, change the cache location to a fast external drive
- Delete cache after finishing a project: Make it part of your project wrap-up workflow
- Run a monthly scan: Use CleanDisk to catch caches from all creative apps at once
Find all creative app caches in 60 seconds
CleanDisk scans Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut, and Logic Pro. Every cache file labeled safe or review.
Download CleanDisk — Free ScanFAQ for video editors
Will clearing cache break my projects?
No. Cache is temporary preview data. Your actual project files, media, and exports are untouched. Premiere and After Effects will just rebuild the cache when you reopen a project.
Why does Premiere use so much cache?
Premiere creates .pek (peak) files for audio waveforms, .ims files for accelerated decoding, and .cfa files for conformed audio. Every clip you import gets cached — and it's never automatically deleted.
Should I clear cache before or after export?
After. The cache speeds up your timeline during editing. Once you've exported, the cache is no longer useful for that project.
The real cost of creative app cache
To put this in perspective, we scanned 8 video editors' Macs as part of our 50-Mac cache study. The results were striking:
| Metric | Video editors (n=8) | All users (n=50) |
|---|---|---|
| Average total cache | 71.3 GB | 42.1 GB |
| Creative app cache alone | 43.7 GB | 15.3 GB |
| Highest single Mac | 127 GB | 147 GB |
| Cache as % of disk (256 GB Mac) | 27.8% | 11.4% |
Video editors lose almost 28% of a 256 GB drive to cache alone. That's the difference between "your disk is full" and having room for your next project.
When Premiere cache causes actual problems
Beyond disk space, bloated cache can cause real editing issues:
- Timeline lag: When your disk is nearly full, Premiere struggles to write new cache files for playback. You get dropped frames and stutter even on fast hardware.
- "Media Offline" errors: Corrupted cache entries can make Premiere lose track of linked media. Clearing cache and re-importing often fixes this.
- Export failures: If there isn't enough space for temporary render files during export, Media Encoder will fail mid-render. This is especially painful on long exports.
- Slow project opens: Premiere indexes all cached media when opening a project. The more cache, the longer the startup.
Setting up a cache management workflow
The best approach is prevention. Here's the workflow we recommend for professional editors:
Per-project
- Start of project: Set cache location to a fast SSD with plenty of room. In Premiere: Edit → Preferences → Media Cache → Browse.
- During editing: Leave cache alone — it's helping playback performance.
- After final export: Clear cache for this project. Edit → Preferences → Media Cache → Delete.
- Archive: Move project files to archival storage. Cache is not included (and shouldn't be).
Monthly maintenance
- Check total cache size:
du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/Media\ Cache\ Files/ - If over 30 GB, clear it all. Open projects will rebuild what they need.
- Also check After Effects disk cache and DaVinci Resolve cache.
- Or run CleanDisk — it finds all creative app caches in one scan.
Premiere Pro auto-cleanup (built-in)
Since Premiere Pro 2024, you can set automatic cache cleanup: Preferences → Media Cache → "Automatically Delete Cache Files Older Than" → set to 30 or 90 days. This helps but doesn't catch After Effects or Resolve caches.