Bottom Line: It is totally safe to delete the Adobe Media Cache. Video editors routinely delete this folder to clear up hundreds of gigabytes of wasted storage space.
What is the Adobe Media Cache?
If you use Premiere Pro, After Effects, or Adobe Media Encoder, you likely have a massive folder called Media Cache Files.
When you import a video or audio file into an Adobe project, Adobe creates a “cache” version of it (usually as a .cfa or .pek file). This allows the software to play back the video smoothly in your timeline without having to decompress the heavy original MP4 or raw file in real-time.
Because Adobe creates these optimized files for every single clip you ever import, this folder grows infinitely and can easily eat up your entire hard drive if left unchecked.
Can you delete it?
✅ Yes, it is perfectly safe to delete.
Deleting the Media Cache does not delete your original video files, and it does not delete your project files. It only deletes the temporary playback files.
How to safely delete it
While you can delete the files manually via your operating system, the safest and easiest way is directly inside Adobe Premiere:
- Open Premiere Pro.
- Close all open projects (File > Close Project). This is important, as Adobe won’t let you delete the cache for a project that is currently open.
- Go to Edit > Preferences > Media Cache (on Windows) or Premiere Pro > Settings > Media Cache (on Mac).
- Under “Media Cache Files”, click the Delete button.
- Select Delete all media cache files from the system and click OK.
What happens after you delete it?
You will instantly recover a massive amount of disk space.
The only consequence is that the next time you open an old project, you will see a progress bar in the bottom right corner saying “Generating Peak Audio” or “Conforming Media.” Adobe is simply rebuilding the cache for that specific project. Your timeline might be slightly laggy for a few minutes while it finishes rebuilding.
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