Then, around December 2020 (with Chrome 87), Google will remove all Flash capabilities from its browser, ending a 12-year symbiotic relationship with Adobe's app. However, users will be able to switch on Flash in the Settings screen. That user approval must be given after each browser restart.Ī year later - in July 2019 and with Chrome 76 - Flash will be disabled by default, even for sites like YouTube and Facebook. Since late last year, Chrome has had Flash off by default, and has limited its use to 10 websites - Amazon, Facebook, YouTube and others - and then only after user approval.Īccording to the Flash roadmap posted on the Chromium website - Chromium is the open-source project that feeds code to Chrome itself - around July 2018 (and with the debut of Chrome 66), sites that continue to use Flash will require explicit user okay to show that content. How does Google plan to kill Flash in Chrome? Like Microsoft, Google will take it one step at a time. 14, 2020 - the retirement date for Windows 7 - IE will be supported only in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.) 'Users will no longer have any ability to enable or run Flash,' said John Hazen, a program manager on the Edge team, in a post to a company blog. Edge will require site-by-site authorization.īy the end of 2020, Flash will be barred from running in Edge or IE. Users will have to manually re-enable Flash in both to view content.

(That click-to-run functionality only made it into Edge in March, when Microsoft launched Windows 10's 1703, aka 'Creators Update.) Internet Explorer (IE) will allow Flash in all circumstances, as it does now, with no limitation.Īt the mid-to-late 2019 mark, both Edge and IE will default to a disabled Flash state. How will Microsoft dead-end Flash in Edge and Internet Explorer? Redmond plans a four-step death for Adobe's once-a-kingpin technology.Ĭontinuing through the rest of this year and into 2018, Edge will ask permission to run Flash 'for most sites' the first time that website is visited. Each of the top four browser makers - Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla - have, to greater or lesser degrees, explained how they're going to sunset Flash.Īnd maybe, just maybe, take one last lunge at that piñata. (Or as Hilwa put it in 2011, 'Nothing lives forever.')īecause browsers have been the primary delivery vehicle for Flash content, how they handle the plug-in's demise will be important to users and content creators alike.

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