Skip to main content
hani28831164irvu
Participant
September 25, 2026

Severe Memory Leak in Premiere Pro 26.5.1 and Premiere Pro 27 Beta on Apple Silicon

  • September 25, 2026
  • 8 replies
  • 131 views

Adobe Premiere Pro Bug Report — Severe Memory Leak

Title: Severe Memory Leak in Premiere Pro 26.5.1 and Premiere Pro 27 Beta on Apple Silicon

I am experiencing a severe memory-usage problem in the newer versions of Premiere Pro on my Mac Studio.

I tested the same large Premiere project across different Premiere versions. The difference is dramatic:

  • Premiere Pro 26.5: approximately 24 GB RAM
  • Premiere Pro 27 Beta: approximately 60–65 GB RAM
  • Updated stable version: memory has climbed as high as 115 GB, eventually causing severe slowdown/unresponsiveness.

After downgrading to Premiere Pro 26.5, I opened the same project on the same Mac Studio. Premiere initially used approximately 24.4 GB, with memory pressure remaining green. This strongly suggests that the extreme memory consumption is related to the newer Premiere versions rather than simply the size of the project or the computer.

Project information

The project is unusually large, containing approximately 10,660 project items and 3,326 sequences, but it works with substantially lower memory consumption in Premiere Pro 26.5.

The memory usage in the affected versions appears to continue increasing during normal editing instead of stabilizing or releasing memory. Eventually Premiere becomes extremely slow or unresponsive.

System

Computer: Mac Studio, Apple Silicon
Memory: 64 GB unified memory
macOS: macOS Tahoe
Affected: Premiere Pro 26.5.1 / newer stable release and Premiere Pro 27 Beta
Much better behavior: Premiere Pro 26.5

I can reproduce the problem using the same project. I also have Activity Monitor screenshots showing the difference in memory consumption.

Please investigate this as a possible memory leak/regression in the newer Premiere builds, particularly with very large projects on Apple Silicon.

    8 replies

    KatieToo
    Community Manager
    KatieTooCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    October 8, 2026

    Hi ​@hani28831164irvu 

    I see you’ve been moved over to our Premiere bug report forums, so welcome! Appreciate you including all those details about your memory issue and what your setup is. 

    Yes, it does sound like you have a growing memory issue based on the information provided, even after moving to Premiere Productions. Noting that v26.5 seems to be most stable for you presently.

    I might like to request what’s known as a Sample file while you’re in both v26.5.1, and once more from v27.1 Beta, for our engineers to see if they reveal what might be going on when that happens. 

    1. Open Activity Monitor and identify the Premiere process (you can use search to filter for only Premiere)
    2. In v26.5.1 Premiere, get it into the hanging/unresponsive state
    3. Switch back to Activity Monitor and right click on Premiere then choose > Create Sample
    4. Click Save, then save it as a text file somewhere.
    5. Repeat this again in v27.1 Beta.

    Once you have those, you can DM me and either provide us the link/access to this file or I can send you our Dropbox link to upload that file, whatever's easiest.

    I wondered if you could give us a little more details on how you managed the media and move to Productions to see if there’s any way to improve that, as well.

    • Was the original project simply added to a Production or divided into multiple smaller project files?
      • How many project files and sequences are in it, and how many projects/sequences are open while memory grows?
    • Does growth start when opening a particular project or sequence, switching between projects, importing media, creating proxies, or playing/editing?
      • Does closing projects or restarting Premiere bring memory back down?
    • Where is the .prodset folder, project files, source media, proxies, and cache/database?
      • Is the source media inside the Production folder or one of its subfolders? Adobe mentions that can cause performance issues and recommends keeping the media cache/database on the workstation’s boot drive or a fast, directly attached SSD, rather than shared storage.
         

    We might like to request a simplified copy of that production project file to try to look further under the hood, or you could even perhaps send some screenshots in the meantime. Sorry for these frustrations with the memory growth, and we hope we can help!
    Katie

    hani28831164irvuAuthor
    Participant
    October 4, 2026

    Hi Kevin,

    Thank you again for your suggestions. I wanted to update you after doing more testing.

    I tested the following versions:

    Premiere Pro 26.5 — Works fine
    Premiere Pro 26.5.2 — Severe memory problem
    Premiere Pro Beta 27.1 — Severe memory problem

    I also tested your suggestion of using a Production.

    With 26.5, the Production works wonderfully. Memory usage was around 24 GB and remained much more manageable.

    However, when testing the Production with 26.5.2 and Beta 27.1, there was no meaningful improvement. Memory usage still climbs dramatically. I have seen the newer versions reach around 60 GB and, during previous testing, even much higher.

    This is why I don’t think project size alone explains what I’m seeing. The same large project behaves well in 26.5 but has excessive memory growth in 26.5.2 and Beta 27.1.

    The Production workflow is definitely helpful, and I appreciate your recommendation. But based on these tests, it appears something changed after 26.5 that is affecting memory management with my project.

    I can continue working with 26.5 for now, but I would really like the Premiere team to investigate the difference between 26.5 and 26.5.2/27.1.

    If useful, I can provide Activity Monitor screenshots, memory statistics, or perform specific comparison tests between these versions.

    Thanks again for your help,
    Hani

      Community Manager
      Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      October 7, 2026

      Hey Hani,

      One other thing worth mentioning when troubleshooting is to press Shift at launch and run the items in the Reset Options dialog box. Run everything except resetting prefs (as that's rather destructive) and see what happens. I often back up my prefs and then reset them. If they are OK, then I place them back. See if that might shake something loose. Something is funky here. Let's rule out media cache or an unsupported plug-in.


      Cheers,
      Kevin

      hani28831164irvuAuthor
      Participant
      October 7, 2026

      Hi Kevin,

      I followed your troubleshooting suggestion and launched Premiere Pro while holding Shift. I ran the Reset Options troubleshooting steps without resetting preferences, including the steps intended to rule out media cache and third-party plug-ins.

      The problem remains. During this test, Premiere Pro reached 53.31 GB of memory and continued climbing.

      I also want to clarify that I have reproduced this behavior on two completely different Mac systems:

      • 27-inch Intel iMac
      • Apple Silicon Mac Studio

      The behavior is consistent on both machines with the newer Premiere versions.

      Here are the facts from my testing:

      Premiere Pro 26.5: works normally with my project/workflow and does not show this extreme continuous memory growth.
      Premiere Pro 26.5.2: memory usage grows abnormally.
      Premiere Pro Beta 27.1: the same abnormal memory growth occurs.
      Production setup: tested; it did not resolve the issue.
      Shift-launch troubleshooting: tested; clearing/ruling out media cache and third-party plug-ins did not resolve it.
      Different hardware: tested on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, with the same version-dependent behavior.

      I understand that a particular project, media type, codec, or effect could potentially trigger a bug. However, the important fact is that the same project/workflow works normally in Premiere Pro 26.5, while the newer versions show the memory problem on two different computers.

      Based on these reproducible results, this looks much more like a regression introduced after Premiere Pro 26.5 than a hardware-specific problem, media-cache issue, or unsupported plug-in.

      Could you please escalate this to the Premiere Pro engineering team and have them investigate the changes between 26.5 and 26.5.2, particularly anything related to memory management? I am happy to provide additional testing information if engineering needs it.

      Community Manager
      Sumeet Kumar ChoubeyCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      September 25, 2026

      Hi hani28831164irvu,

      Welcome to the community, and thanks for the detailed report! Have you noticed any differences in memory consumption with other projects, or does this issue occur only with this particular project? Are you using any third-party effects or plugins in Premiere? Also, does the affected Premiere project contain any MOGRTs or After Effects compositions? We're here to help, just need more info.
      ​​​​​​​

      Thanks,
      Sumeet

      hani28831164irvuAuthor
      Participant
      September 25, 2026

      Hi Sumeet,

      Thanks for the response.

      I have tested this extensively on both my iMac and Mac Studio, with different Premiere projects and different Premiere versions.

      The important finding is that the problem appears to be version-related:

      • When I downgrade to Premiere Pro 25.6, memory usage returns to normal.
      • I also tested Premiere Pro 26.5, and it works normally on both my iMac and Mac Studio.
      • I tested different projects, so the issue is not limited to one particular project.
      • In Premiere Pro Beta 27, I have even seen a new/empty project jump to around 10 GB of memory, despite having virtually nothing in the project.
      • With the problematic version, larger projects can cause Premiere’s reported memory usage to climb dramatically. I have seen it exceed 100 GB on a Mac with 64 GB of physical RAM, resulting in heavy memory compression, swap usage, yellow memory pressure, instability, and crashes.

      My large production project does contain a significant amount of content—approximately 10,660 items and 3,326 sequences. However, the key point is that the same project behaves normally when I downgrade to an earlier Premiere version.

      Regarding third-party effects/plugins, MOGRTs, and After Effects compositions, I can provide additional details if needed. Please let me know what logs, diagnostics, or project information would be most useful for reproducing the issue.

      Thanks,
      Hani

        Community Manager
        Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
        Community Manager
        October 2, 2026

        Hey there Hani,

        Thanks for your post. I heard you're dealing with a memory leak. That's no fun, for sure. You've described your issue very well, so the community appreciates that.


        Super large projects are the ones more likely to exhibit this behavior. What can mitigate it is to break down the large project into smaller projects and group them into what is called a "Production." Once you have the Production in place, you'll face fewer problems than with a single massive project. If something goes wrong, you are troubleshooting a much smaller "sub-project."


        Another issue that can create memory leaks in a project is when you have updated an older project over multiple versions. Was this a new project that got large, or is it an older project that came from some previous version and you've updated the project across multiple versions of the application? Was that the case?

        Troubleshooting and fixing the issue might involve creating a production, and rebuilding your project. Before going down that road, though, what you might try is to press Shift at launch and choose the items in the Reset Options dialog box. Sometimes simply deleting the media cache can fix issues like this. You can also try the others; however, resetting preferences will delete any customizations. There are a couple of other things you can do, like updating the software and the OS, or trying the beta, but it appears you have already done that. Reverting to a version where the issue was not giving you problems is also a possibility, and it sounds like you've done that.


        I had the same problem for my travel video series, which I had problems with once my project got to a size similar to yours. Once I converted the project to a Production, I've been able to maintain this massive project since 2016.

        Let me know if you have any questions. I hope we can help you get going again with a functioning project workflow. Sorry for the frustration.


        Thanks,
        Kevin

        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices