Adobe Flash Is Finally Dead – And You Should Uninstall It Immediately. Here Is How and Why.

Uninstall Adobe Flash Player From any devices on which you still have it running.

Flash was once the dominant platform for rendering multimedia content in web browsers, but, as Adobe has terminated support for Flash as of the end of 2020, and, as Flash has created serious security problems in the past, now is the time to get rid of Flash once and for all. In fact, starting on January 21, in order to protect users who do not remove the software, Adobe will begin blocking Flash content from running.

Flash’s death was not unexpected.

Flash helped bring multimedia content to the Internet in the early 2000s, but, within a few years, the problems that it introduced became clear. Personally, I have not been a fan of Flash, and for well over a dozen years, I have strongly discouraged using it – its design was inherently problematic from a security standpoint, it used disproportionate computing resources, and it did not work on iPhones, iPads, and many Android mobile devices.

While Flash enjoyed popularity for some time, technological advantages made it increasingly unattractive to developers and users, and, by the early 2010s, the handwriting was on the wall; Apple’s then CEO, Steve Jobs, published a scathing open letter about Flash, as Apple and various other major technology vendors migrated away from the platform. In 2015 Google began “pausing” Flash animations, and, by late 2016, Google, Microsoft, and Apple had all announced that future versions of their web browsers would block Flash by default.

The mass exodus from Flash, coupled with the various issues created by use of the platform, led to Adobe recommending in 2015 that developers seek to use alternatives to Flash, and to the firm announcing in 2017 that it would terminate support for Flash as 2020 came to an end. The same reality, however, also means that few users today should notice any adverse impact when they remove Flash from their computers – popular websites have long since migrated away from using the technology.

Adobe offers tools that make removal of Flash simple, straightforward, and fast.

To remove Flash on Windows Computers please use the Adobe tool for removing Flash from Windows.

To remove Flash on Macs please use the Adobe tool for removing Flash from Macs.