Participant

P: Constant freezing making editing next to impossible

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
April 19, 2026
80 replies
699 views

Approximately every other edit, the application becomes unresponsive for 30 seconds to a minute. During this time:

The UI freezes completely
Playback may continue, but I cannot stop or interact with it
Menu interactions are extremely delayed or unresponsive
The system becomes partially unresponsive (e.g., Alt+Tab does not work until Premiere responds again)

This issue also occurs when pressing play, and when opening menus.

The problem began suddenly without any known changes to my workflow or system configuration. It occurs across all projects.

Troubleshooting attempts:

Updated GPU drivers
Cleared media cache multiple times (both “clear unused” and “clear all”)
Tested editing from different drives (including internal and external storage)

None of these steps resolved the issue.

This behavior is severely impacting usability and makes editing extremely frustrating.

Windows 11 25H2 (26200.8246)

Premiere Pro v26.2.0 Build 65

Gigabyte AORUS 15P XD

-Intel i7-11800H

-16GB DDR4-3200

-GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile

Pinned Reply By Amy the Stuv

I split everyone here off onto a new post based on the main issue happening. We are still investigating the cause that is NOT related to Accessibility features, which is currently being worked on.

Please if you experience a freeze or hang in 26.5 with Accessibility features disabled, we could use Dump files from your system to help us ID the issue that is not related to accessibility features, which we are currently working on fixing on this separate post:

WINDOWS dump file:

Open Task Manager go to the Processes tab, and identify the Premiere process (you can use search to filter for only Premiere)
In Premiere, get it into the hanging/unresponsive state
Switch back to Task Manager and right click on Premiere then choose > Create dump file
When it's finished, it tells you where it saves the .DMP file.
It'll be large, but it ZIPs down smaller. So right click on the file and choose Compress to..ZIP file.
Then, you can DM me and either provide us the link/access to this file or I can send you a link to upload that file, whatever's easiest.

Other freezing / Hang related issues we have branched off and ID’d specific potential triggers are below:

We believe this is specific to the Panel interactions:

We believe this is specific to File Explorer:

Hoping to help,

Amy

Show previous replies

K

KirillRotenberg

Participant

Hi. I found a way to fix the interface lag issue in Premiere Pro 26.3.

In the upper left corner, open "Edit" → "Preferences" → "General."
Find the "Render UI using GPU acceleration" setting.
Disable it.
Click "OK." If Premiere asks you to restart the program, do so.

After disabling it, my interface lag completely disappeared. The Timeline became smooth again, the playhead began moving normally during playback, and the Premiere window itself no longer stutters when moving.

Before disabling it, CPU and GPU usage were low, so the issue appears to be related to GPU rendering of the Premiere interface, not a performance issue.

I have an RTX 2050 Laptop + Intel Core i5-12450H + 16GB of RAM. So far, Premiere Pro 26.3 works fine after disabling this setting.

This problem with the Premiere Pro interface has been going on since the 25x version. I only discovered today that you can disable "Render user interface using graphics acceleration." At least, it worked for me. Adobe doesn't want to fix anything; all they care about is money.

K

KirillRotenberg

Participant

Hi. I found a way to fix the interface lag issue in Premiere Pro 26.3.

In the upper left corner, open "Edit" → "Preferences" → "General."
Find the "Render UI using GPU acceleration" setting.
Disable it.
Click "OK." If Premiere asks you to restart the program, do so.

After disabling it, my interface lag completely disappeared. The Timeline became smooth again, the playhead began moving normally during playback, and the Premiere window itself no longer stutters when moving.

Before disabling it, CPU and GPU usage were low, so the issue appears to be related to GPU rendering of the Premiere interface, not a performance issue.

I have an RTX 2050 Laptop + Intel Core i5-12450H + 16GB of RAM. So far, Premiere Pro 26.3 works fine after disabling this setting.

This problem with the Premiere Pro interface has been going on since the 25x version. I only discovered today that you can disable "Render user interface using graphics acceleration." At least, it worked for me. Adobe doesn't want to fix anything; all they care about is money.

D

defaultpbdtrv4uzk8j

Participant

Hello, I can reproduce the same issue and completed a controlled comparison on the same Windows system.
System:
- Premiere Pro 26.3.2 (file version 26.3.2.2)
- Windows build 26200.9168 (25H2)
- Intel Core i7-13700F
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, Studio Driver 610.88
Key reproducible result:
- A completely new, empty Premiere 26.3.2 project with no imported media and no sequence enters a persistent CPU busy loop.
- After startup, Premiere 26.3.2 consumed approximately 9.6 to 13.0 CPU-seconds during each 10-second sample. In a thread-level sample, one Premiere thread consumed 4.891 CPU-seconds in 5 seconds while the other threads were nearly idle.
- On the exact same machine, Premiere Pro 25.6.6 consumed only 0.484 CPU-seconds during a 10-second idle sample and the UI remained responsive.
The 26.3.2 loop still reproduced after:
- resetting Premiere preferences and rebuilding all Adobe media caches;
- starting Premiere with third-party video plug-ins disabled;
- closing all CEPHtmlEngine processes;
- testing a completely empty project and an empty timeline;
- removing all graphics, adjustment layers, media, and effects from a diagnostic project copy;
- updating Mister Horse, and separately testing without Mister Horse graphics;
- closing Steam, TaskbarHero, and TourBox.
This indicates that the general Preferences / Sequence Settings / Effect Controls / Export UI freeze is a Premiere 26.3.2 host regression, not a specific media file or Mister Horse effect by itself.
There is also a separate export stall in a real project at about 84%. It occurs exactly at a boundary from H.264 1920x1080 29.97 fps media to HEVC 3840x2160 59.94 fps high-bitrate media with effects. However, the global UI/CPU issue reproduces independently in an empty project.
I can provide a Task Manager dump privately if Adobe can provide the preferred secure upload route. I will not post the dump publicly because it may contain project or user data.

J

Jonathan+Editor

Community Manager

Hi @defaultpbdtrv4uzk8j,

Thank you for posting this report. I have privately messaged you about the steps for the dump.

An internal report has been filed for this issue, and we appreciate your patience as the team continues to work through the bug.

Best,

Jonathan

Y

youthful_Haven02b4

Participant

1 Star. Absolutely unacceptable workflow disruption!

The latest updates are an absolute nightmare. Premiere Pro constantly crashes the entire Windows system, turning my PC into a completely unresponsive brick right in the middle of editing. Dynamic Link is totally broken — after downgrading to fix the freezes, Premiere completely loses connection with Media Encoder, throwing a fake "Media Encoder not installed" error.

I had to waste hours manually creating proxies through watched folders, rebuilding caches, and hacking the file structure just to prevent my computer from dying on a project with GoPro HEVC files. Fix your software! We pay a premium subscription for a professional tool, not for a broken beta test that ruins our hardware and nerves!

KatieToo

Community Manager

@youthful_Haven02b4 What version Premiere did you roll back to that started having issues with dynamic linking, I wonder? I haven’t seen any reports of that issue with this, so far and would like to get more info.

Looks like you’re using PC. Can you confirm if on Windows 11/10, what driver version/build, and any of the versions of Premiere currently having this freezing issue?

To better help with investigating, could we have you get a dump file any time next Premiere is freezing? Keep Task Manager open to easily swap to.

Open Task Manager go to the Processes tab, and identify the Premiere process (you can use search to filter for only Premiere)
Launch Premiere, work until it reaches that same delayed hang or unresponsive state
Switch back to Task Manager and right click on Premiere then choose > Create dump file
When it's finished, it tells you where it saves the .DMP file. It'll be large, but it ZIPs down smaller.
Right click on the file and choose Compress to .ZIP file.

You can DM me when you’ve gotten this file, and either provide a link to place of choosing with the file like Google Drive or we can provide a Dropbox upload link to drop that onto for the engineers.

Sorry for all these frustrations and hope to help!
Katie

M

moowee

Participating Frequently

I am running 26.3.2 (Build 2) on Windows 11 and have the same problem. Whenever I press on any names in the menu panel (file, edit, clip, sequence, etc), the Premiere completely freezes the whole system including other running software for about 15-30 seconds!

M

moowee

Participating Frequently

I am running 26.3.2 (Build 2) on Windows 11 and have the same problem. Whenever I press on any names in the menu panel (file, edit, clip, sequence, etc), the Premiere completely freezes the whole system including other running software for about 15-30 seconds!

And I do not have Windows Magnifier enabled.

System specs:

OS: Windows 11 Pro, build 26200.9168
Motherboard: Supermicro X11DAi-N, Intel C621 chipset, BIOS 4.7
CPU: 2× Intel Xeon Gold 5218 @ 2.30 GHz — 32 cores / 64 threads total
RAM: 128 GB DDR4 ECC Registered, 2400 MT/s
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB
Storage: NVMe SSD + multiple SATA SSDs
Display: AOC Q3279WG5B, 31.5"

FocusPulling.com

Known Participant

This long-standing bug in the 26.2 and 26.3 platform went away for a while but is back with 26.3.2. I had been reverting to 26.0.2 for a long time just to avoid this, especially when simply accessing top menu items. Adobe is stubborn and refuses to fix this.

KatieToo

Community Manager

@FocusPulling.com Thanks for that additional info about v26.2-26.3.2. If you’re having freezing occur there, may we request a dump file to help investigate this further? Same instructions I gave above to Youthful.

Keep Task Manager open to easily swap to in order to grab a dump file and do the following:

Open Task Manager go to the Processes tab, and identify the Premiere process (you can use search to filter for only Premiere).
Launch Premiere, work until it reaches that same delayed hang or unresponsive state.
Switch back to Task Manager and right click on Premiere then choose > Create dump file.
When it's finished, it tells you where it saves the .DMP file. It'll be large, but it ZIPs down smaller.
Right click on the file and choose Compress to .ZIP file.

You can DM me when you’ve gotten this file, and either provide a link to place of choosing with the file like Google Drive or we can provide a Dropbox upload link to drop that onto for the engineers.

Sorry for the delay and frustrations, much appreciated!
Katie

KatieToo

Community Manager

Hi @ty_7598

Thanks for stopping by the Premiere forums! So sorry you’re having this freezing issue, and I wanted to let you know that we are tracking this issue. We have a bug report ticket on-going, so I will add this to that and return with an update once I receive one.

To note, they have identified Windows Accessibility as one cause specific to the menu/ui type freezes involving one known as Magnifier. See this post:

Even if you did not actively turn Magnifier on, sometimes it can be toggled on from launching certain Steam games, etc. I would check on that just in case.

Appreciate your time and effort spent reporting on this issue!
Katie

ty_7598

Participant

Premiere Pro 26.3 becomes unstable and repeatedly freezes when interacting with the application UI. Opening menus, changing settings, or performing basic UI actions causes Premiere to hang and eventually stop responding.

This issue does not occur in Premiere Pro 25.5 on the same computer. The same hardware, drivers, and Windows installation work correctly with Premiere Pro 25.5, Photoshop, and After Effects.

This appears to be a Premiere Pro 26.x-specific compatibility issue

I tried every fix listed online such as

Completely uninstalled and reinstalled Premiere Pro.
Installed previous versions of Premiere Pro 26.x.
Reset Premiere preferences/settings.
Disabled third-party plugins.
Cleared Premiere media cache.
Updated NVIDIA drivers.
Performed a clean NVIDIA driver reinstall.
Used Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to completely remove and reinstall graphics drivers.
Tested Premiere using both GPUs:
- NVIDIA RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
- Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics

And after all of that I decided to try an earlier version of premiere (I know that was probably something I should’ve done earlier) and when trying version 25.5 the issue ceased. Hope this can help anyone having a similar problem.

Will+Velásquez

Participant

Tengo instalada la versión 26.3.0.93 y realmente ha sido un dolor de cabeza, he formateado mi Alienware, limpié el caché, reactualicé los drives. Pero no hubo efecto positivo, el problema continúa persistiendo. Inclusive mandé hacer una revisión interna de mi portátil, y no se encontró ni un problema. El problema se presenta en la última versión de 26.3.0.93 y relacionados.

KatieToo

Community Manager

@Will+Velásquez Sorry to hear that’s been happening, and this post got added to the report. Are you still having this issue if updated to v26.3.2 like Focuspulling mentions?

Are you on Windows 11/10 (which driver version/build) and was this happening across all projects? Some?

To note, it seems for Windows especially that any kind of Accessibility toggled on, like Magnifier or Power Automate or anything else tapping into the Accessibility systems were creating freezing issues there. Can you confirm if you happen to have any of that toggled on? See thread:

Even if you did not turn it on yourself, sometimes apps or launching certain Steam Games can do this.

They’ve also indicated that a fix for this issue should be available in v27 Beta. Can you let us know if trying that helps?

Appreciate it,
Katie