Is it safe to delete the Adobe Camera Raw cache on a Mac?
Asked 2/25/2021
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On my Mac, the folder ~/Library/Caches/Adobe Camera Raw has grown very large and is taking up a lot of disk space. Is it safe to delete this cache without harming my Lightroom catalog or RAW edits? If so, are there any precautions I should take first?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
5y ago
2 Answers
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I agree with Alaska Man that things may depend on settings and, as a general rule, you'd better know what you are doing.
That said, I regularly delete this folder (on Windows) without ill effects. (I also set a fairly low cache limit). Once I process my RAWs, I rarely return to them, so there is little point keeping the cached copies.
If you are not sure, just rename the folder and see if everything still works in ACR, esp. when editing RAWs you recently processed already. (I prefer this explicit way instead of using Trash). Then, after a while, you can delete this folder permanently.
IMO, if the software calls something 'cache', it must be purely performance-related and should be safe to delete at any time when the software isn't running. Alas, this is not always true in practice, but if so, the software is poorly designed. Fortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case with ACR.
Originally by user74236. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user74236
5y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes — the Adobe Camera Raw cache is generally safe to delete, and doing so should not damage your Lightroom catalog or your RAW edit settings. The cache is mainly there to improve performance by storing temporary preview/processing data.
What to expect:
- Deleting it may slow down opening or re-editing some RAW files at first.
- Adobe apps can rebuild the cache as needed.
- It’s best to do this when Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw is not running.
A cautious approach:
- Rename the folder first instead of immediately deleting it.
- Reopen Lightroom or Camera Raw and test a few recently edited RAW files.
- If everything works normally, you can delete the old folder later.
If the cache is growing too large, consider lowering the cache size limit in Adobe preferences so it doesn’t keep expanding.
In short: safe to clear for space recovery, with the tradeoff of temporarily reduced performance until the cache rebuilds.
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