Adobe Flash Player is a multimedia player that plays the SWF and is in-built in most browsers. Flash Player for Mac is compatible with Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. While the program takes low network bandwidth and the websites with flash animations load faster on Mac devices, the program takes up a lot of CPU resources. As of December 2020, Adobe has discontinued support for Flash. This means you can no longer download Flash Player from Adobe's website and there will be no further updates. Furthermore, all the major web browsers have disabled the Flash Player plugin. If you still need to access Flash content, you'll need to find an alternative.

The Adobe Flash Player browser plugin lets you view video and animated content in Firefox. This article has information about testing, installing, updating, uninstalling and troubleshooting the Adobe Flash plugin.

Table of Contents

• 4Troubleshooting

Visit Adobe's Flash Player Help page to see if the Flash plugin is installed and working properly. If it tells you that Flash is not installed, see the next section on how to install the latest Flash plugin.

The Flash plugin automatically updates itself by default. If Adobe's Flash Player Help page says that Flash is outdated and you don't want to wait for the automatic update, you can update Flash manually by downloading and installing the latest version from Adobe.

To check if your installation of Flash is up to date, visit Adobe's Flash Player Help page. If it says that Flash is outdated, you can update Flash by downloading and installing the latest version from Adobe.

1. Go to Adobe's Flash Player download page and download the Flash installer.
   Caution: Adobe's download page may include a checkbox for optional software (such as Google Chrome or McAfee Security Scan) that is selected by default. If you do not clear the checkbox before downloading, that software will be installed on your computer when you open the Flash installer.
2. When the download has finished, close Firefox. Click the Firefox menu and select Exit.Click the Firefox menu at the top of the screen and select Quit Firefox.Click the Firefox menu and select Quit.
3. Open the Flash installer file you downloaded and follow the instructions.

1. Go to Adobe's Flash Player download page and download the Flash installer.
2. Click the Firefox menu and select Exit.Click the Firefox menu at the top of the screen and select Quit Firefox.Click the Firefox menu and select Quit.
3. Open the file you downloaded (i.e. install_flash_player_osx_intel.dmg).
4. In the Finder, open the Install Adobe Flash Player.app to run the installer, then follow the installer's instructions.

1. Go to Adobe's Flash Player download page.
2. When prompted, save the file (i.e. install_flash_player_'version'_linux.'processor'.tar.gz).
3. Click the Firefox menu and select Exit.Click the Firefox menu at the top of the screen and select Quit Firefox.Click the Firefox menu and select Quit.
4. Open a Terminal window (in Gnome, click on the Applications menu, select Accessories, and then select Terminal.)
5. In the Terminal window, change to the directory where you saved the file you downloaded (e.g. cd /home/user/Downloads).
6. Extract libflashplayer.so from the file you downloaded with the command tar -zxvf install_flash_player_'version'_linux.'processor'.tar.gz.
7. As the super user, copy the extracted file, libflashplayer.so, to your Firefox installation directory's plugins sub-directory. For example, if Firefox is installed in /usr/lib/mozilla, use the command sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and then enter your super user password when prompted.
   

For instructions on uninstalling Flash, see Adobe's help page, Uninstall Flash Player - WindowsUninstall Flash Player - Mac OS.

Flash plugin not working

If Adobe's Flash Player Help page does not show that Flash is working even though you have installed the latest version, your Flash plugin may be disabled in the Add-ons Manager. To make sure that Flash is enabled,

1. Click the menu button , click Add-ons and Themes Add-ons and Themes Add-ons and select Plugins.

If Flash is disabled, click the ellipsis (3-dot) icon and select Ask to Activate in the drop-down menu.

Stop Plugins On Chrome

Flash plugin not working on certain websites

Firefox can block the Flash plugin on certain websites, if using it would cause security, speed or stability problems. For more information, see The Flash plugin is blocked on some sites by default.

Flash works in Internet Explorer or Chrome but not in Firefox

There are three different types of Flash Players: an ActiveX version for Internet Explorer, a Chrome version built into the browser and a plugin version for Firefox and some other browsers. If you want Flash to work in Firefox you must install the plugin version, as explained above.

'Run Adobe Flash' prompts

The Flash plugin is set to 'Ask to Activate' by default. Click on the 'Run Adobe Flash' message to allow the Flash content to load (if it doesn't, reload the webpage and try again). For details, see the Why do I have to click to activate plugins? article.

The Adobe Flash plugin has crashed

If you see this message instead of Flash content, see Adobe Flash plugin has crashed - Prevent it from happening again and Adobe Flash protected mode in Firefox.

Unresponsive plugin warning

Firefox will show you a warning dialog if the Flash plugin is taking longer than expected:

See the article Warning Unresponsive plugin - What it means and how to fix it for solutions and workarounds.

Cannot view full screen Flash videos

See Flash videos won't play full screen.

Playing Flash videos makes Firefox hang

If Firefox stops responding or if the Flash plugin hangs or stops working when playing Flash videos or games, try these solutions:

• Pause or stop Flash in other tabs. You may need to close those tabs.
• Update Flash. See the Installing or updating Flash section above for instructions.
• Disable hardware acceleration in Flash settings. See Disable hardware acceleration in Flash for details.
• Update your graphics drivers. See Upgrade your graphics drivers to use hardware acceleration and WebGL.

• Disable Flash protected mode. See Adobe Flash protected mode in Firefox.

Other Flash problems and solutions

• Your Flash issue could be caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration in Firefox. See Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems to narrow down the cause.
• Other solutions for general audio and video problems are listed in the Fix common audio and video issues article.

• If Flash content does not work, acts strangely, causes errors, or if you see a notice that you need to update Flash even after installing the latest Flash version, uninstall and reinstall Flash.

Uninstall Flash Player Chrome Mac

Based on information from Flash (mozillaZine KB)

These instructions are NOT applicable to Flash Player included with Google Chrome. Visit the Flash Player Help page for instructions on enabling (or disabling) Flash Player in various browsers.

If you use Windows, see Uninstall Flash Player | Windows.

If your Flash Player installation was not successful, use the following solution to reinstall.

Click the Apple icon and choose About This Mac.

The Mac OS version appears in the About This Mac dialog.

• Run the uninstaller on Mac OS X 10.4 and later, including macOS
  

Note:

Beginning with Flash Player 11.5, uninstalling the Flash Player resets the AutoUpdateDisable and SilentAutoUpdateEnable settings in mms.cfg to their default values:

• AutoUpdateDisable=0
• SilentAutoUpdateEnable=0

Access Chrome Plugins

If you are running the Flash Player uninstaller as part of your deployment process, redeploy any custom changes to either AutoUpdateDisable or SilentAutoUpdateEnable.

Flash Player

Download the Adobe Flash Player uninstaller:

• Mac OS X, version 10.6 and later: uninstall_flash_player_osx.dmg
• Mac OS X, version 10.4 and 10.5: uninstall_flash_player_osx.dmg

The uninstaller is downloaded to the Downloads folder of your browser by default.

In Safari, choose Window > Downloads.

If you are using Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), click the Downloads icon displayed on the browser.

To open the uninstaller, double-click it in the Downloads window.

Note: If the Flash Player installer window does not appear, choose Go > Desktop in the Finder. Scroll down to the Devices section and click Uninstall Flash Player.

To run the uninstaller, double-click the Uninstaller icon in the window. If you see a message asking if you want to open the uninstaller file, click Open.

Bookmark or print this page so that you can use the rest of these instructions after you close your browser.

To close all browsers, either click the browser name in the Uninstaller dialog, or close each browser manually and then click Retry.

Note: Do not click Quit in the Uninstaller window. It stops the uninstallation process.

After you close the browsers, the uninstaller continues automatically until the uninstallation is complete. When you see the message notifying you that the uninstallation succeeded, click Done.


Delete the following directories:

• <home directory>/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player
• <home directory>/Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash Player

Download the Adobe Flash Player uninstaller:

• Mac OS X, version 10.3 and earlier: uninstall_flash_player_osx_10.2.dmg (1.3 MB) (updated 05/27/08)

Choose Window > Downloads to view the downloaded uninstaller.

Save the uninstaller file in a convenient location.

To open the uninstaller, double-click it in the Downloads window.


To run the uninstaller, double-click the Uninstaller icon in the window. If requested, enter your computer user name and password and click OK.

Bookmark or print this page so that you can use the rest of these instructions after you close your browser. Close all browsers and other applications that use Flash Player, including instant messaging applications, SWF files, and projectors (EXE files that play SWF files). Otherwise, the uninstaller cannot finish (even though it appears to finish).

Once the uninstaller finishes, the window closes automatically.

Flash Plugin Chrome Mac

You can verify that uninstallation is complete by following these steps:

Shockwave Flash Plugin Chrome Mac

Open your browser and check the status of Flash Player.