Microsoft plans to offer the uninstall-Flash update via Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) as an 'optional' download 'in early 2021,' with a change to 'recommended' a few months later. (That's something Adobe is not doing automatically, though it advised users to 'help secure your system.')įor a thorough run-down on Microsoft's plans, including options for enterprises and how it will scrub Flash from Windows, users should check out this page from September, which remains current. developer's path toward Flash finality is complicated.īut rather than spell out a set of steps it will take, Microsoft instead intends to go to the root of the problem and purge Flash from Windows. Edge and Internet Explorerīecause Microsoft's Edge now relies on Chromium and Internet Explorer (IE) is maintained only as a legacy last resort for businesses, the Redmond, Wash. 'It will no longer be possible to enable Flash Player with Enterprise policy in Chrome 88+,' Google said.

The Chromium project, the Google-led effort that produces the technologies foundational to not only Chrome, but Microsoft's Edge as well, will also completely remove Flash support in January with the launch of Chrome 88, now set to debut Jan. 'Flash Player will be marked as out of date and will be blocked from loading' in Chrome come January, Google said in the Chromium roadmap. Here are how those browser makers will wrap up Flash - if they haven't already done so - late this year and early next. (Last year, Computerworld returned to the topic for a status update on the browsers' progress.) Because the vast bulk of Flash content was created for websites and run in web browsers, those four developers' plans carried enormous weight. The big browser makers - Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla - piggybacked on Adobe's July 2017 announcement with their own roadmaps for the end of Player. What Adobe didn't mention was the security disaster Flash had become earlier in the century, the endless rounds of patching security vulnerabilities, often the worst 'zero-day' kind, which had prompted so many content makers, former software partners and users to stiff-arm the player. Adobe argued that ending Flash was triggered by the evolution and maturation of open standards - like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly - that 'provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered' and thus were 'a viable alternative for content on the web.' In mid-2017, Adobe announced it would retire Flash from support and halt distribution of the application by the end of 2020.

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