Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome OS (Global variant, excluding China)ģ2.0.0.465 / December 8, 2020 12 months ago ( ) For the file format sometimes referred to as "Shockwave Flash", see SWF. It is not to be confused with Adobe Shockwave. Flash is a menace on battery life and is continually found to have serious security flaws, so its eventual disappearance will be celebrated at every step."Shockwave Flash" redirects here. Buried inside of Chrome's preferences page (under privacy and then content settings), you can find an option called "let me choose when to run plugin content." It'll block all Flash content until you right click on it and choose to have it enabled.Įven Adobe doesn't think people should use Flash any longer, so there likely won't be a huge amount of pushback on Chrome's changes. If you're interested, you can already enable the settings that Google is planning to switch over to. That's the default setting right now this plan pushing things much further. Google began enabling Flash blocking on a very limited scale a year ago, when it started "intelligently" pausing unnecessary content as a way to preserve battery life. Google began "intelligently" pausing Flash last year But the proposal notes that "the tone and spirit should remain fairly consistent," even if details are altered here and there. Specifics of Google's plan could still change. So if a website has a backup HTML5 player, people using Chrome will see that, rather than a prompt to enable Flash. To further encourage that change, Chrome won't simply be blocking Flash - it'll be pretending like Flash isn't even installed. And it encourages web developers to make the switch to HTML5, so that people aren't discouraged from leaving their site. Even so, disabling it by default still offers protections against unwanted and potentially malicious content. It's still in there and still able to be widely run, so long as people keep giving it permission. Of course, this change still doesn't fully remove Flash from Chrome. After that, it sounds like they'll have Flash blocked by default, just like everyone else. But they'll only have a one year exemption. Those include YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitch, and Amazon. Only 10 sites would have Flash enabled by default - the "top 10 domains using Flash," to avoid annoying people with too many prompts.
The top 10 sites with Flash will get an exemption
Chrome would display a prompt offering to enable Flash if chosen, Chrome would remember to run Flash on that site for all future visits.
Visitors would still be able to enable Flash content on a site-by-site basis, but they would have to specifically choose to do so. Under its current vision, nearly every website would have Flash content blocked by default. Google has detailed plans to start blocking most Flash content with Chrome, with the change targeted toward the end of this year. Flash's death has been slow and painful, and now Google is planning to deal it another blow.