How to Completely Uninstall Premiere Pro From Your Mac

A video editor I work with had a 1TB MacBook Pro that kept running out of space. He’d uninstalled Premiere Pro twice trying to fix it. The problem: Premiere’s media cache was sitting in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files/ weighing in at 340GB. Uninstalling Premiere doesn’t touch it. Neither does the official Adobe uninstaller.

Premiere is the heaviest Adobe app to remove cleanly. Between the app bundle, the media caches, the preview files, and the audio waveform peaks, you’re looking at 5-100GB of leftover data depending on how much editing you’ve done.

What Premiere actually leaves behind

Drag Premiere to the Trash and you’ve removed maybe 4GB out of a footprint that’s often 30-50GB. The rest is in:

• Media Cache — peak files, audio conformance, indexed files in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache/ and Media Cache Files/
• Premiere-specific caches in ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.PremierePro.24/
• Auto-save files in ~/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/24.0/
• Preview files scattered wherever your project files live (these don’t get removed)
• App bundle at /Applications/Adobe Premiere Pro 2024/
• Shared Adobe components in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/ and ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/
• Privileged helper at /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2
• Launch agents and daemons in /Library/LaunchAgents/ and /Library/LaunchDaemons/

The media cache is the killer. Every video clip you’ve imported into a project — even projects you’ve deleted — leaves behind cached audio waveforms, indexed metadata, and sometimes transcoded preview files.

Step 1: Quit Premiere and Adobe processes

Open Activity Monitor and search “Adobe.” Quit each process you find:

1. Adobe Premiere Pro
2. Adobe Media Encoder (often left running after exports)
3. Dynamic Link Manager
4. Adobe QT32 Server
5. Adobe Crash Reporter
6. Core Sync, AdobeIPCBroker, AGSService
7. Creative Cloud Desktop processes (Adobe Desktop Service, CCXProcess, CCLibrary)

Dynamic Link Manager is sneaky — it stays running to enable Premiere/After Effects/Audition handoff. Force-quit it.

Step 2: Run Adobe’s official uninstaller

Use Creative Cloud Desktop’s built-in uninstaller before you start manually deleting files. This deregisters the license seat and removes some hooks.

1. Open Creative Cloud Desktop
2. Find Premiere Pro in your installed apps
3. Click the three dots beside it
4. Pick Uninstall → Yes to remove preferences

The uninstaller takes 1-3 minutes. When it’s done, the app bundle in /Applications/ is gone and Premiere’s privileged components are deregistered.

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Step 3: Nuke the media cache (the big one)

This is the most important step for reclaiming space. The media cache holds peak files (audio waveforms), conformed audio, indexed metadata, and transcoded preview frames for every video Premiere has touched.

Locations to clear:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache/
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files/
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Peak Files/

You can delete the entire contents of these folders safely — they regenerate when needed. With Premiere uninstalled, you don’t need them at all.

Step 4: Remove the rest of the user-level files

Open Finder, hit Cmd+Shift+G, and visit each of these. Delete Premiere-specific contents:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro/24.0/ — workspaces, layouts, captures
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save/24.0/ — project auto-saves
• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/7.0/MediaCore/ — Premiere/AME plugins (only if removing all Adobe video apps)
• ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.PremierePro.24/
• ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.AdobePremierePro.24/
• ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Premiere Pro 24 Settings/
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.PremierePro.plist
• ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.adobe.PremierePro.savedState/
• ~/Library/Logs/Adobe/Premiere Pro/
• ~/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/24.0/ — auto-save copies (check before deleting!)

The auto-save folder in Documents is worth checking before you delete it. If you have unfinished projects without backups, those auto-saves might be your lifeline.

Step 5: System-level cleanup

These require admin password:

• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro 24/ — system-wide components
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/ — shared video tooling (only delete if removing Media Encoder, After Effects, and Audition too)
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/HD Recorder/ — capture device support
• /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2

Be careful with Adobe/Common/ — Media Encoder, After Effects, Audition, and Character Animator all use it.

Step 6: Adobe Media Encoder is its own app

Premiere installs Media Encoder alongside it. Uninstalling Premiere doesn’t remove Media Encoder. If you used Premiere, you almost certainly used Media Encoder for exports.

In Creative Cloud Desktop:

1. Find Media Encoder in installed apps
2. Click the three dots → Uninstall
3. Repeat the manual cleanup for Media Encoder’s bundle ID (com.adobe.AdobeMediaEncoder.24)

Media Encoder’s caches live in ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.AdobeMediaEncoder.24/ and can hold several GB of transcoded staging data.

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Step 7: Hunt down preview files in your project folders

This one’s manual and there’s no shortcut. Premiere creates preview render files alongside your .prproj files. They’re in folders named:

• <ProjectName> Audio Previews/
• <ProjectName> Video Previews/

Search your video project drives for these and delete them. They can be 10-100GB on heavily-edited projects.

Step 8: Empty Trash and restart

Reboot to release any open file handles and clear launchd state. Verify in Activity Monitor that no Adobe processes are running after login.

Realistic space recovery

A clean Premiere Pro uninstall typically reclaims:

• 4GB from the app bundle
• 5-50GB from media cache (depends entirely on your editing volume)
• 1-3GB from preferences and caches
• 0-100GB from preview files in project folders

Total: anywhere from 10GB to 150GB. The biggest factor is the media cache, which most people never knew existed.

Manual versus automated

The manual route works but it’s a lot of folders. Adobe’s bundle IDs are inconsistent — Premiere uses com.adobe.PremierePro.24, com.adobe.AdobePremierePro.24, and com.adobe.AdobePremiereProBeta.24 for the beta build. Miss one and files persist.

Sweep scans for every Adobe-prefixed bundle ID and shows the full footprint before deletion. Where it really saves time is the media cache — it knows that’s a Premiere artifact and flags it as part of the uninstall, not just an “other” cache. Manual hunting works; automated tools just find more.

Resetting Premiere instead of uninstalling

If you’re trying to fix a broken Premiere (won’t launch, crashes on open), don’t uninstall. Hold Option+Shift while launching Premiere. It’ll prompt to reset preferences. This fixes most issues without touching the install.

If you need to reset deeper (cache, plugin cache, peaks), delete just the contents of ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.PremierePro.24/ and the media cache folders. Relaunch — Premiere rebuilds them fresh.