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Best practices for updating Premiere Pro

Every Premiere Pro update includes new fixes and optimizations that improve its stability and performance.

Updating is one of the best things you can do to keep Premiere Pro running well.

Note:

As with any software, we do not recommend updating when you are in the middle of a large project. The best time to update is when you’re between projects or working on smaller pieces.

Best practices for updating Premiere Pro

Tip: The Creative Cloud Desktop app has settings for auto-updates. If you need to control the timing of your updates, turn off auto-updates for Premiere Pro.

Understanding updates

  • Each year there are around 6 scheduled updates of Premiere Pro. Usually, these have “dot releases” version numbers, like 23.1 or 23.2.
  • Typically, there is one major release each year. Major releases have a new version number, like 22.x or 23.x.
  • All Premiere Pro updates with the same version number are compatible with each other: a project saved in Premiere Pro 23.6 can be opened by Premiere Pro 23.0 (or any other 23.x version).

Scheduled updates: Recommended maintenance 

Dot release updates are a great time to do your Premiere Pro housekeeping. This includes checking your system drivers, one of the most common causes of performance issues.

We recommend the following:

  1. Check your system drivers: Help > System Compatibility Report.
  2. Clear your Media Cache: Use launch reset options.
  3. Rebuild your Plugin Cache: Use launch reset options.

To access the reset options, launch Premiere Pro while holding down a modifier key, such as Cmd (macOS), or Ctrl (Windows). In the Reset options dialog, check the boxes for Clear media cache files and Reset plugin loading cache

Major releases: Recommended maintenance

We strongly recommend doing full maintenance when updating to a new major release, like updating from 22.6 to 23.0. This includes all of the tasks described above: check drivers, clear Media Cache, and rebuild your plugin cache.

In addition: 

  • Check third-party plugins

Out-of-date third-party plugins can cause issues. Check that you have the correct plugin versions before updating to a new major release version.

  • Backup your customizations

For major releases, we recommend backing up your customizations, including preferences, keyboard shortcuts, and workspace layouts.


Related resources

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If you have questions about updating Premiere Pro, reach out to us in our Premiere Pro community. We would love to help.

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