What are Adobe Media Cache Files on Mac? Can you delete them?

Where it is

What it is

When you import video or audio, Adobe's video apps create helper files so playback and scrubbing are smooth: conformed audio, waveform peak files and index files. They are stored in two folders in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common, called Media Cache Files and Media Cache.

The cache is shared between Premiere Pro, After Effects, Media Encoder and Audition, and it covers every project you have ever opened. Finished projects leave their cache behind.

Premiere Pro can remove old cache files automatically by age or by total size, but that only happens if you turn it on in its settings. You can also move the cache to another drive there.

How big it gets

Often several GB, and tens of GB if you edit long or high-resolution footage regularly.

How to clear it by hand

1. Open Premiere Pro without opening a project, so that all cache files can be removed.
2. Choose Premiere Pro > Settings > Media Cache.
3. Click Delete next to Remove Media Cache Files, choose to delete all media cache files, and confirm.
4. In the same window you can set the cache to be cleaned automatically, by age or when it passes a size you choose.
5. If you no longer have the Adobe apps, quit them and move the contents of the two folders to the Trash. The command below shows their sizes.

du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/Media\ Cache ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/Media\ Cache\ Files

What happens afterwards

The next time you open a project, the app rebuilds the cache for its media. Until that finishes, audio waveforms are missing for a moment and playback can be less smooth. Your footage and project files are not touched.

How Diskzy handles it

Diskzy shows the Adobe folders and their sizes on the disk map, and its Clean up tab looks for caches. What it removes goes to the Trash.

Related guides

• Final Cut Pro render files(inside each Final Cut library)
• iMovie render files~/Movies/iMovie Library.imovielibrary
• Application Support~/Library/Application Support
• Caches~/Library/Caches