How to Clear the After Effects Disk Cache (and Stop It Filling Your SSD)

After Effects quietly allocates up to 10% of your drive for its disk cache — on a 256 GB SSD that is 25 GB gone before you have rendered a single frame. Knowing how to clear the After Effects disk cache properly, and how to keep it from growing back, will save you hours of troubleshooting "low disk space" warnings mid-render.

What Is the After Effects Disk Cache?

After Effects writes pre-rendered frames to a dedicated disk cache folder so it does not have to re-compute them when you scrub the timeline. This is useful for playback performance, but the cache is never automatically pruned — it accumulates across every project you have ever opened until you clear it manually.

There are two distinct caches to understand:

• RAM cache — lives in memory, gone when you quit AE or run Edit > Purge.
• Disk cache — written to your drive, persists across sessions, and is the one that eats gigabytes.

Method 1: Edit > Purge (RAM Only — Not the Disk Cache)

Many users open Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache expecting it to empty the disk cache. On current versions of After Effects (2022 and later) this command clears the RAM cache and the in-session disk cache entries that AE currently tracks, but it does not delete orphaned cache files left behind from other projects or previous sessions.

Use Purge when you need to free RAM mid-session. Do not rely on it as a thorough disk cleanup.

Method 2: Empty Disk Cache via Preferences (The Correct Way)

This is the definitive method to empty the After Effects disk cache and reclaim the full allocation.

1. Open After Effects and go to After Effects > Settings (macOS Ventura and later) or After Effects > Preferences > Media & Disk Cache (older versions).
2. Select the Media & Disk Cache panel.
3. Click Empty Disk Cache and confirm the dialog.
4. Optionally click Clean Database & Cache to remove stale database entries for files that no longer exist on disk.

After Effects will delete every cached frame file from the cache folder. The folder itself remains; only its contents are removed. This is safe to do at any time — AE will simply re-render frames as needed during your next session.

After Effects Disk Cache Location on Mac

By default the disk cache lives at:

~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/After Effects/[version]/Media Cache Files

The related media database is at:

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

Many users relocate the cache to an external drive or a secondary SSD to protect their system volume. You can change the location in the same Media & Disk Cache preference pane by clicking Choose Folder.

If you have moved the cache folder and forgotten where it is, the current path is always shown in the preference pane. Alternatively, Crumb's Visualize view scans your entire Mac and surfaces large folders by size, so the cache folder will appear near the top of the list regardless of where you moved it — useful when the path has been changed by a colleague or a reinstall.

Manually Deleting the Cache from Terminal

If After Effects is not installed or you want to script the cleanup, you can delete the contents directly. Replace the version number as appropriate:

# Delete disk cache frames (safe — AE will regenerate)
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/Media\ Cache\ Files/*
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Common/Media\ Cache/*

Do not delete the folders themselves, only their contents, or After Effects may complain that the cache directory is missing on next launch. This is permanent — there is no undo.

How to Cap the Disk Cache Size

Emptying the cache solves today's problem; capping it prevents the problem from recurring. In Media & Disk Cache preferences you will see a Maximum Disk Cache Size slider. The default is 10% of the selected volume.

If you are working on a 256 or 512 GB internal SSD, strongly consider moving the cache to an external drive and setting no hard cap there. After Effects performs better with a larger cache, but not at the cost of your system running out of space.

Purge After Effects Cache on Mac — When Each Method Applies

• Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache — use mid-session to recover RAM. Quick, does not touch orphaned files on disk.
• Preferences > Empty Disk Cache — use when you want to fully reclaim disk space. Deletes all cached frames. Safe.
• Clean Database & Cache (same pane) — use when AE's database references missing files and playback feels sluggish. Rebuilds the index.
• Terminal rm — use for scripted or automated cleanup, or when AE is uninstalled. Permanent, no undo.

What Else Accumulates Alongside the AE Cache?

Adobe applications are prolific cache writers. Media Encoder, Premiere Pro, and Audition each have their own cache folders under ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/ and ~/Library/Caches/. After a long project it is not unusual for the combined Adobe cache footprint to exceed 40–80 GB on a system that has never been cleaned.

If you want a broader cleanup beyond just After Effects, download Crumb — its one-click Clean pass removes system caches, logs, and temp files across macOS, and the Visualize tab shows you exactly which folders are consuming the most space so you can decide what to clear next.

Is It Safe to Delete the After Effects Disk Cache?

Yes — the disk cache contains rendered frames only. Deleting it does not affect your project files, source footage, or exports. The only consequence is that After Effects will need to re-render cached frames the next time you open those compositions, which takes time but causes no data loss.

The media database files (Media Cache and Media Cache Files) are also safe to delete, though After Effects will spend a few minutes rebuilding the database on next launch by re-scanning your source files.

Do not delete folders inside ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/After Effects/[version]/ that contain preferences, presets, or scripts — those affect your AE configuration and are not cache.

Summary

To clear the After Effects disk cache on Mac: open After Effects > Settings > Media & Disk Cache, click Empty Disk Cache, and confirm. Set a sensible maximum size to prevent it from growing back. If you have moved the cache folder and lost track of it, tools like Crumb can surface large folders instantly so you always know what is taking up space on your drive.