Premiere Pro 26.2 / 26.2.2 — Severe UI lag and freezing on every click (resolved only by rolling back to 26.0.2)
App Version: Premiere Pro 26.2.0 and 26.2.2 (issue present in both, including the current Beta build) Issue Category: Performance / UI Responsiveness OS: [Windows 11 Pro 24H2 / macOS version] CPU: [your CPU] GPU: [your GPU + driver version] RAM: [your RAM]
Problem Description: After updating to 26.2, the UI freezes or hangs on nearly every mouse interaction — opening top menus, clicking panels, scaling clips, and using the text/captions tools. Each freeze lasts from a few seconds up to several minutes ("Not Responding"). Timeline playback itself is relatively smooth; the issue is specifically UI responsiveness. The problem occurs in existing projects AND brand-new empty projects, so it is not project-related.
26.2.2 was supposed to address this, but the freezing persists with only minor improvement. The current Beta build shows the same behavior.
Troubleshooting already performed (no fix):
- Reset preferences (Alt on launch)
- Cleared media cache and relocated to NVMe
- Clean GPU driver reinstall (Studio driver)
- Disabled hardware-accelerated decoding (H.264/HEVC)
- Purged Adobe and Windows font caches, deactivated unused fonts
- Disabled Adobe Fonts sync in Creative Cloud
- Disabled all overlay apps (NVIDIA overlay, Discord, RGB software)
- Removed third-party plugins (renamed MediaCore folder)
- Added AV exclusions for Premiere, cache, and project drives
- Tested single-display setup
- Tested fresh Windows user profile
- Full uninstall/reinstall of Premiere
Result: Rolling back to 26.0.2 resolves the issue completely — UI is instantly responsive on the same machine, same projects, same drivers. This confirms a regression introduced in 26.2, not a hardware or system limitation.
Impact: This is blocking professional daily editing work. Multiple-minute hangs occur several times per hour on 26.2.x, making the build unusable in production.
Request: Please investigate the UI/font rendering or memory-leak regression introduced in 26.2. Happy to provide a memory dump or system report if needed.
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