How to Uninstall Adobe Flash Player from Mac

It’s 2021 and Adobe no longer supports Flash Player, so it’s time to uninstall it from your Mac. Here’s how to get rid of the relic of an ancient era of Internet browsing.

Flash was an important element of early web browsing, which was used to generate various animations, forms, and other interactive elements of a website for a user. It was adopted as it offered more options to web developers and media creators than HTML, animated GIFs and other basic technologies of the time.

However, as browsers improved and began to demand open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly, among others, Flash fell by the wayside as the dominant way to provide interactivity. The increasing use of the Flash Player installer for malicious software purposes also probably accelerated its demise.

The death of Flash

Adobe announced in 2017 that it would stop developing and distributing Flash Player by the end of 2020 and encourage the adoption of other open formats for content that uses Flash. Adobe then cited a collaboration with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla as the impetus behind the decision to end the technology.

Since that announcement, Adobe has continued to support Flash with security patches and other updates, setting its actual EOL date as December 31, 2020. As of January 1, 2021, Adobe would no longer support Flash Player itself, followed by set the software to block Flash content will not run from January 12.

For end users, this would largely mean that Adobe no longer intends to release Flash Player updates or security patches. Because Flash can be a security risk, especially if there are no more updates on the horizon, Adobe recommends that users uninstall Flash Player from their computers.

Adobe has even taken the step of removing Flash Player download pages from its website, to prevent anyone curious from being tempted to install it on its own in the last days of its life.

Major browser vendors are also disabling Flash Player so that it does not run from the EOL date. For Mac browsers, Safari turned off Adobe Flash support in early 2020, after previously requiring users to explicitly enable it, while Firefox version 84.0 is the latest with Flash support and the same Removal of support is under way for Chrome and Microsoft Edge. .

For iPhone and iPad users, Flash has never been an issue, as iOS and iPadOS devices never support the technology.

However, Flash is not being completely removed, as Adobe has offered support avenues for business customers who need Flash Player for internal business systems. However, for the web in general, Flash is basically dead.

Deleting Flash

Even though web browsers remove support and will be seemingly inert, you still have to work to get rid of the last vestiges of your Mac. Flash Player is a standalone application that needs to be uninstalled before you can seriously consider your Mac without Flash.

The Adobe Flash Player uninstaller running on macOS.

The Adobe Flash Player uninstaller running on macOS.

How to uninstall Flash Player for Mac OS X 10.4 or later and macOS

  1. Open the file uninstaller.
  2. Click on Uninstalll.
  3. Close all browsers if any, manually or by clicking on each browser name in the uninstall dialog. Click on Please try again if necessary.
  4. Wait for the uninstaller to complete. Click on Fet.
  5. Open Search engineand then locate and delete the directory / Library / Preferences / Macromedia / Flash Player
  6. Staying in the Finder, locate and delete the directory / Library / Caches / Adobe / Flash Player
  7. Open a browser at this link check has been uninstalled.

How to uninstall Flash Player for Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.3

  1. Open the file uninstaller.
  2. If necessary, authenticate with your Mac.
  3. Click on Keep on.
  4. Once completed, the uninstaller will close automatically.
  5. Open a browser at this link check has been uninstalled.

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