Flash is finally set to die

Adobe has announced their plans to kill off Flash for good. Google, Apple and Microsoft have been blocking Flash for over a year in their browsers and now Adobe has finally decided to end support for it fully by the end of 2020.

There is still a surprising number of websites that rely on Adobe Flash though. Adobe has said they will continue to support those websites until 2020 and is encouraging developers to move to more modern formats such as HTML5 before then.

“We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats,” said an Adobe spokesperson.

Microsoft has said it plans to disable Flash by default in Edge and Internet Explorer in a 2019 update, with full removal from all supported versions of Windows sometime before 2020. Google will continue phasing out Flash in Chrome over the upcoming years, and Mozilla says Firefox’s users will have the option to choose which websites run Flash from next month. Apple has also expressed support for Adobe’s decision, at present, Safari requires approval for each website to run Flash even if the user has Flash installed on their Mac.

Since the launch of the original iPhone over a decade ago, Flash has had an uphill battle to stay relevant. Many major websites and browsers have turned their back on the format due to its security and performance vulnerabilities.

If your website still uses Adobe Flash, get in touch with us.