The writing has been hanging on the wall for a long time. While Flash played a vital role in the early days of the Internet – it was the default way YouTube played its videos, for example – it is outdated. Open web standards such as HTML5 made it possible to embed content directly on web pages.
Even when it was useful, it was far from universally loved. When some iPhone users complained about the lack of Flash on their devices which made some websites useless, Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs refused to admit. In 2010, he wrote a scathing open letter about the software, saying iPhones and iPads would never support Flash, which was true for years. plagued by bugs and security issues.
That marked the beginning of the end. A year later, Adobe said it would no longer develop the software on mobile devices.
Flash Player remained a ubiquitous desktop tool across multiple web browsers, with over 1 billion users just a decade ago, making it a particularly useful vulnerability for hackers to exploit. The software was a notorious target for hackers and resulted in numerous high profile security breaches.
As HTML5 started to catch up with Flash, usage declined. In 2014, 80% of Google Chrome users visited a site with Flash code. That dropped to just 17% in 2017.
Adobe (ADBE) announced its plan to end support for Flash three years ago – and the program’s end-of-life day finally came December 31. Although some operating systems and browsers have already discontinued Flash, Adobe is encouraging people to check that Flash Player is removed immediately on their devices “to help protect their systems,” as it will no longer receive security updates.
The company has published removal instructions for both Windows and Mac users. This is how it works:
- Download a Flash Player Uninstaller. (There is a different one for every OS; and if you’re on a Mac, pay attention to which OS version you’re using.)
- Run the uninstaller. (On Windows, you must first close all browsers and programs that use Flash. On iOS, you do that as part of the process.)
- Then you can check if the removal was successful by restarting your computer and then checking the status of Flash Player on your computer from the Adobe website.
Goodbye, Flash Player.