Adobe Flash Player ends officially on December 31, 2020
Adobe published a new support page on its website this week that provides information about the upcoming end of support for the company's Adobe Flash Player product. According to the information, Adobe Flash Player support ends on December 31, 2020.
Users should have uninstalled the Adobe Flash Player software on their devices by then, and Adobe plans to display notifications to users about the upcoming end of support for the product.
Most browser vendors have started to limit Flash Player functionality in browsers already. Google Chrome for example displays information about the upcoming Flash Player support end to users who use it, and has limited how Flash Player is activated in the browser. The company made Flash use annoying in the browser to discourage its use.
All major browser makers, e.g. Google or Mozilla, plan to remove support for Adobe Flash from their web browsers in late 2020 or early 2021.
Adobe set the date for support end to December 31, 2020. The company plans to release security updates for Adobe Flash Player until that date. Browser makers like Google or Microsoft will include these updates in their web browsers (as Flash is integrated natively in these browsers).
Flash Player downloads will be removed from the Adobe website when support ends and Adobe discourages users from installing Flash Player from third-party download sites because it is no longer supported officially.
The company revealed as well that "Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL date". It is unclear how that is achieved but a possibility is that Adobe could integrate a switch in Adobe Flash Player that prevents content from being executed in 2021. It is unclear whether that decision will affect preservation projects such as the Flash Games Preservation project.
Closing Words
It looks as if it will be difficult to run Flash content after December 31, 2020 because of Adobe's announcement that Flash content won't be executed anymore by Flash Player after support ends. It is possible that older versions of Flash will continue to execute code, but these have security issues that Adobe patched in newer versions.
Now You: Do you use Flash content (still) on the Internet?
RIP zombo.com :(
ZomboCom is now HTML5 since 5 January 2021!
It will be the end of an era, despite that Flash was already made redundant many years ago. I can’t really remember when was the last time I really felt the need to have flash, probably around 2010, after that only archaic websites would still rely on such a stupid and useless technology.
Now it doesn’t bother me if browsers still have it, but will be good when it’s finally removed from them and archaic websites are forced to modernize.
Windows 10 still comes with Flash in 2020 and you can’t even remove it. It’s ridiculous.
It can be removed, but You have to FORCE it to be removed. I did that on my dads Windows 8.1. It took some time, but now most traces of it are gone. I think You can do the same in Windows 10.
I still use flash on some games sites,notably adventure and escape games.
Depending on how long those sites run i shall continue.Using an older flash version in plae moon browser may help as i shall not update the player.
It is rather sad as i cannot find any non flash games which are as good as flash based ones.
It is certainly the end of an era and love or hate flash it did make the early days of the internet more exciting and entertaining.
I play a flashplayer game online for a few minutes everyday. I will hate, hate to lose it.
This may be the only good thing about 2020.
I could not agree more.
Good riddance to that bug ridden buffer overflowing bocce hot mess. Adobe Flash has been one of the worst ever examples of software ever written. Like ever, ever, ever. And then some. x2. And then add infinity kind of terribleness.
If there’s a lesson to be learned then it’s make sure your code is secure – Flash has had more patches than an old quilt! In fact you would have been quicker re-writing it from scratch than patching it… in assembler… with punched cards… whilst blindfolded and dancing the Fandango…. Most online hacks involved Flash, Javascript and Internet Exploder! It should have died years ago when Adobe bought Macromedia.
Still, the moral of the story is closed source software can hide a truck load of sloppy programing. Perhaps Adobe should have open sourced it (like twenty years ago) and it might still have been around today. Instead it will go down in history of a Who’s Who of worst ever programing super turd level.
@kalmly and @Kubrick
Find a google chrome portable 57 version
Put the portable in a c:\temp folder
No make a batch file:
start c:\temp\portablechrome57\chrome.exe https://name of your website
it will start chrome57 wich has an enabled flash policy
works fine, also with downloaded swf files and from usb stick
Haven’t they announced the retirement of Flash for the past 5 years or so?
Hey Flash, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out…
Hi Martin,
Any article on how to uninstall Flash on windows 10? I have tried and it seems it is deep embedded on Windows 10 and there are lots of guides around without a straighforward guide to it.
I use Revo Uninstaller. I uninstalls software without a trace.
“Lindsay
Mon Jun 22 2020
RIP zombo.com :(”
Not exactly:
https://html5zombo.com/
ðŸ˜
Some companies really need to get their **** together. There are big commercial platforms that still force the use of the flash player in some areas of their sites, e.g. their design tools.
Five years later…
I miss all those flash games, you can find non-flash games but nowhere near as many.
Flash has apparently been around for almost 25 years, The Simpsons was started with its predecessor FutureSplash but all those funny little sports games with double jointed gyrating characters were the best.
About time. I remember about the not so distant past when my credit card company would force me to use Flash in order to complete a transaction online… nuts.
Unofficially it will still be on my ‘puter.
Because HTML5 games aren’t worth playing!
The question I have is; what do we do to control devices that have built in flash to control the device?
Devices such as video projectors, DVR’s for security cameras?
Some of these use flash to operate the device even locally on the LAN. Thus, it requires a browser to support flash in order to operate instead of using a handheld remote control. Will devices such as this simply be required to be replaced? The manufacturers don’t seem to be aware of this.
new blog from MS regarding the Adobe Flash EOL support published Sept. 4, 2020:
https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/09/04/update-adobe-flash-end-support/
one important quote:
“An update titled “Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player†will be made available via Microsoft Update Catalog, Windows Update and WSUS that permanently removes Adobe Flash Player as a component of the Windows OS devices.”