Methods, apparatus, and processor-readable storage media for application aware cache management are provided herein. An example computer-implemented method includes maintaining a data structure comprising at least one entry indicative of an importance of at least one of a plurality of applications associated with a storage system; and controlling whether or not a particular data item requested by one of the plurality of applications is cached in a cache memory of the storage system based at least in part on the at least one entry of the data structure.