Problem Solved – Adobe Bridge Cache Error

Eric-ETH
August 26, 2014

Have you ever received the following Adobe Bridge cache error message?

Bridge encountered a problem and is unable to read the cache. Please try purging the central cache in cache preferences to correct the situation

Bridge encountered a problem and is unable to read the cache. please try purging the central cache in cache preferences to correct the situation

Bridge encountered a problem and is unable to read the cache. Please try purging the central cache in cache preferences to correct the situation

Anyone who has seen this knows that purging the central cache does nothing to help the problem. Luckily, there’s an actual solution for the Bridge cache issue.

After hours of searching over the past few years and countless reinstalls, I came across the real way to fix Adobe Bridge cache problems. I like to think of it as Bridge’s best kept secret.

The Adobe Bridge CC 2014 Factory Settings Reset

Adobe Bridge Master Reset Box

This little box will save you so much pain and suffering when it comes to Bridge not working right. Apparently it’s been part of the application for quite some time, but no one knows about it.

How do you reset Adobe Bridge CC 2014 to factory settings?

  1. Quit Adobe Bridge
  2. Hold down Command + Option + Shift
  3. While holding down the keys, open Bridge
  4. Tick the first two boxes (the third will be grayed out)
  5. Click “Ok”*

That’s it. You will be on your way to a happy relationship with Adobe Bridge once again.

[notification type=”alert-warning” close=”false” ]*NOTE: this will erase all your Adobe Bridge settings.[/notification]

The good news is that Bridge should be back to normal. Unfortunately, you will probably have to do this every couple months when Bridge starts acting up. I would rather the Application work right and have to reset my settings a few times a year than deal with it not working.

One last thing

If you think the information I’ve given you here was valuable and you do any shopping on Amazon.com, please do one thing for me. Go to amazon with this link and I will get a small commission on any of your purchases for the next 24 hours. It would mean a lot to me if you would make this simple click. Thanks in advance.

Let me know in the comments if this fix worked for you.

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Comments & Discussion

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        Assuming Bridge is open, it will be visible in the dock. From the dock, right-click (or control-click) on the bridge icon and then click on “quit”.

        Another option would be to press Command + Q while Bridge is open.

        Reply
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  7. It worked!! Thank you very much for solving a long time problem. Yes, I too have tried to get help from Adobe to no avail. Great customer service…not.
    Very helpful thank you.

    Reply
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      I’m glad it helped you as well. I actually just did this agin yesterday. I wish it was a permeant fix but apparently the application gets itself back to the same busted up spot over time.

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  11. Thank you! just did this and I’m back in business (my “other” workaround was to use an older version of Bridge…)

    Reply

  12. Thank you so much! I have been trying to fix this problem for days!!!!!! I’m bookmarking this page for next time this occurs.

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  23. I ditto all of the above comments. Chasing my tail looking for a solution that works. This finally did it. I think it’s Adobe’s way to force us to use Creative Cloud as I have the last fully licensed version.

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  39. Thanks for this solution, for months now Bridge has been working okay but minibridge in both Indesign and Photoshop just shows grey boxes instead of the pictures.This fixed it immediately.

    Reply

  40. awesome awesome awesome! After dealing with this annoying problem for months, I’m SO glad I finally decided to google and see if anyone else were having the same issues. You saved me a lot of frustration with this incredibly easy solution. Thank you lots and lots and best wishes all the way from little Holland:)

    Reply

  43. Thank you, Eric! For the past few months of trying to use Bridge (a program I’ve used for 10 years) , I’ve , uninstalled, reinstalled, googled a solution, uninstalled, reinstalled, googled a solution, postponed, given up, tried again . . . . on and on! Today I found your entry. You’re brilliant! Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

  49. Thanks for this incredibly helpful tip — I’ve passed this along to my IT folks and posted it on my digital archiving blog. One thing, though, and that concerns sequence. I tried holding the keys down (on a PC) and launching Bridge as suggested and it didn’t work. I did find on an Adobe forum (I think) of trying the reverse. That is launching Bridge and then IMMEDIATELY holding the 3-key sequence and voila! Thanks again!

    Reply
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      1 Quit Adobe Bridge

      2 Hold down Command + Option + Shift

      3 While holding down the keys, open Bridge

      4 Tick the first two boxes (the third will be grayed out)

      5 Click “Ok”

      Reply
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  65. this is how to fix it for windows users: close photoshop, open your bridge (the separate application), click edit, preferences, cache, purge cache, ok. It will take a several minutes to complete. Then open photoshop again and the bridge will work.

    Reply
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  68. So glad I found you, this cache problem with photoshop has been a real pain for months and your solution worked and so simple too!
    Thank you.

    Reply

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