Adobe Flash player is no longer supported by browsers and is no longer safe to use
Flash Player was the first widely-used software that enabled games and streaming audio and video to play seamlessly on your computer and in your browser. Flash is now officially retired and Adobe will no longer support the software with security updates—meaning it will be unsafe to run in the future.
All major browsers have already disabled Flash. You may have a system copy on your computer for running Flash applications outside of the browser, however, and should delete it. Here’s how.
- Check to see if you have Flash. Go to https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html. Click Check Now or look for the moving clouds in the picture. If you don’t have Flash, you are done!
- You may get a prompt from Flash during the process. Click Uninstall if you see the prompt and follow any instructions that follow.
- If you have to manually uninstall your copy, here are instructions for Windows and Mac computers.
We’ve known for several years that Flash would be killed off on December 31, 2020. There are now much better, faster, and safer technologies for multimedia, interaction, and gaming. Chances are you haven’t needed to use Flash for quite some time and probably never noticed its absence. Adobe announced the demise of Flash support in 2017 to give developers plenty of time to migrate Flash-based software to newer standards.
Remember that using outdated and unsupported software can expose you to risk as hackers exploit flaws to push spyware and viruses to vulnerable computers. Adobe is removing download links and is advising users to not use Flash at all in the future.
