Flash Player For Mac Problems

Posted on by

For a long time, Adobe’s Flash Player was one of the most widely used browser plugins on the internet. Animation, web games, and entire websites were all powered by Flash. Even YouTube’s video. Install Adobe Flash Player on Mac. In order to be able to play Flash Videos, you will need to. Adobe will end support of Flash Player on December 31, 2020. Here's what you can expect in the meantime for each Microsoft browser: In the next version of Microsoft Edge (built on Chromium), Flash will be disabled by default. However, users may re-enable it on a site-by-site basis. The timeline for Chromium-based browsers can be found here.

Adobe Flash Player is a free software plug-in used by web browsers to view multimedia, execute rich Internet applications, and stream video on your Mac.

Adobe Flash Player is the most popular multimedia player plug-in available. However, recently there have been security concerns which has threatened its popularity as users seek safer alternative solutions. Opera, Firefox and Chrome contain built-in versions of Flash running in sandbox mode. This method is safer than running Flash as a plugin. However, currently the reality is that you still may need the Adobe Flash Player on your Mac because many websites will not work well if you uninstall it. Here I’ll show you how to install Adobe Flash Player and how to set it up correctly.

Apple Flash Player For Mac

How to install Adobe Flash Player on your Mac.

1. Go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ to download the Adobe Flash Player installer.

2. By default, the installer package will be downloaded to your “Downloads” folder.

3. Select the file on your Mac and double click to install it.

4. Select “Allow Adobe to install updates (recommended)” and click “DONE” to complete the installation.

If you installed Adobe Flash Player, but still cannot view online videos on certain websites, you need to check Adobe Flash Player on your browsers.

Adobe Flash Player For Mac Pc

How to set up Adobe Flash Player on various browsers.

Safari

1. Launch Safari and go to the Apple menu bar and click Preferences.

2. Select the Websites tab and select On for “When visiting other websites.”

3. Refresh the browser tab, or restart the browser.

Google Chrome

1. Launch Chrome and type chrome://settings/content in the address field.

Flash Player For Mac Problems

2. Select “Ask first (recommended)” and turn it on.

3. Refresh the browser tab or restart the browser.

Opera

1. Launch Opera and go to the Apple menu bar and click Preferences.

2. Select the Websites tab and then select “Allow sites to run Flash”

3. Refresh the browser tab or restart the browser.

Firefox

1. Launch Firefox and go to the Apple menu bar and click Tools – Add-ons.

2. Click the Plugins tab and turn the “Shockwave Flash” to “Always Activate.”

Note: (SWF (Shock Wave Flash) is a special format created by Macromedia, which has been acquired by Adobe. It is widely used in web design, animation production and other fields.)

For enhancing the user experience and security, Adobe is always trying to improve Adobe Flash Player. However, sometimes when you view a website, a Flash Player upgrade popup appears. Most people would click the “update” button to update their Flash Player, but this could be a false popup used by hackers to compromise your Mac. This is a method hackers use to trick you into downloading adware and malware through a false popup.

Be careful and don’t trust any automatic updates of Adobe Flash Player. Here I will tell you how to install real Flash Player updates and set it up.

How to update Flash Player on Mac safely

1. Go to the Apple menu bar and select System Preferences.

2. Select Flash Player.

3. Select the Updates tab and select “Allow Adobe to install updates (recommended)”. (Note: The Flash plug-in is officially updated 1~2 times a month, so selecting this option avoids frequent update.)

4. You may now notice that the Flash Update settings now shows NPAPI and PPAPI plugins. Let me explain them.

NPAPI – used by Safari, Firefox

PPAPI – used by Chromium, Opera and Chrome (Chrome’s implementation is built in)

5. Click Check Now to confirm that you currently have the latest version installed.

If you had clicked a false popup and downloaded adware, don’t worry, the Apple App Store has many antivirus apps, such as Trend Micro’s Antivirus One, that you can use to do a free scan.

Follow the steps below in case you downloaded a fake Adobe Flash Player.

Mac

1. When you first install Antivirus One, click “Pattern Update” to make sure your virus pattern is up to date. We suggest you update the virus pattern every day.

2. After the first installation, we highly suggest you perform a full scan of your Mac to check all files for possible infections. The Full scan will take more than one hour.

3. If you still find adware and a full scan has not found any viruses, we recommend you use Adware Cleaner. You can access Adware Cleaner in the left panel of the Antivirus One window.

Adobe Flash Player For Mac

How to uninstall Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player for the Mac is a plug-in, not a Mac OS X application. When you try to uninstall Adobe Flash Player from your Mac, you might find that this plug-in is not so easy to delete. For example, you might see this message:

Cannot find Adobe Flash Player in your Applications folder.

In this case, Adobe Flash Player could not be removed and no reason was given. The following steps show how to uninstall Adobe Flash Player with no remaining parts.

1. Go to the /Applications/Utilities/ folder on your Mac and double-click the Adobe Flash Player Install Manager app.

2. Click Uninstall to begin the process.

3. Type the password and click Install Helper.


4. If your browser is running, the following window will appear. Select “Force Close All” to continue.

5. After the uninstaller removes the Adobe Flash software from your Mac, click Done.

Related posts:

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.

The Firefox Software Update feature does not update installed plugins. See the Adobe Security bulletins and advisories page for information about security and stability issues affecting Adobe Flash Player and other Adobe products.

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.
Note: If you are having problems with the Flash installer from Adobe's download page, you can use this Flash Player installer link to directly download the full installer.
  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.

Note: Running Adobe's uninstaller will remove Flash from all browsers where it is not built-in, including Internet Explorer. You will be prompted to reinstall Flash when you visit a page that requires it, such as Adobe's Flash Player Help page.

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 select Plugins.

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

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.

Note: Starting in Firefox version 69, the option to always activate Flash has been removed. To learn more, see this compatibility document.

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:

Mac

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

Flash Player For Mac Ipad

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.

Adobe Flash Player Mac Problems


Based on information from Flash (mozillaZine KB)