Adobe Flash Player (known in

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

, and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

as Shockwave Flash) is a discontinuedExcept in China, where it continues to be used, as well as Harman for enterprise users. computer program for viewing

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

content, executing

rich Internet application A Rich Internet Application (also known as a rich web application, RIA or installable Internet application) is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software. The concept is closely related to a single-page ...

s, and

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

audio and video content created on the

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...

platform. It can run from a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

as a browser plug-in or independently on supported devices. Originally created by

FutureWave FutureWave Software, Inc. was a software development company based in San Diego, California. The company was co-founded by Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay on January 22, 1993. The VP of Marketing was Linda Michelle Alsip, who also came from Sil ...

under the name FutureSplash Player, it was renamed to Macromedia Flash Player after

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...

acquired FutureWave in 1996. After Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, it was developed and distributed by

Adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

as Adobe Flash Player. It is currently developed and distributed by Zhongcheng for users in China, and by

Harman International Harman International Industries, Inc., commonly known as Harman, is an American audio electronics company. Since 2017, the company has been operating as an independent subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut ...

for enterprise users outside of China, in collaboration with Adobe. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created using

Adobe Flash Professional Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash Professional, Macromedia Flash, and FutureSplash Animator) is a multimedia authoring and computer animation program developed by Adobe. Animate is used to design vector graphics and animation for television ...

Adobe Flash Builder Adobe Flash Builder (previously known as Adobe Flex Builder) is an integrated development environment (IDE) built on the Eclipse platform that speeds development of rich Internet applications (RIAs) and cross-platform desktop applications, part ...

, or third-party tools such as FlashDevelop. Flash Player supports video and

raster graphics upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

;

vector graphics Vector graphics are a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector displ ...

;

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the purposes of perfor ...

; embedded audio; and an object-oriented scripting language called

ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (mean ...

, which is based on

ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a standard for scripting languages, including JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript. It is best known as a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different web browsers. It is stan ...

(similar to

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

Internet Explorer 11 Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is the eleventh and final version of the Internet Explorer web browser, by now retired. It was initially included in the release of Windows 8.1, Windows RT, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on October 17, 2013 ...

and

Microsoft Edge Legacy Microsoft Edge Legacy (often shortened to Edge Legacy), originally released as simply Microsoft Edge or Edge is a discontinued Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. Released ...

since

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

, along with

on all versions of Windows, came bundled with a sandboxed Adobe Flash Player plug-in. Flash Player once had a large user base, and was required to run many web games, animations, and

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) elements embedded in web pages. Adobe stated in 2013 that more than 400 million, out of over 1 billion connected desktops, updated to new versions of Flash Player within six weeks of release. However, Flash Player became increasingly criticized for poor performance, consumption of battery on mobile devices, the number of

security vulnerabilities Vulnerabilities are flaws or weaknesses in a system's design, implementation, or management that can be exploited by a malicious actor to compromise its security. Despite a system administrator's best efforts to achieve complete correctness, vir ...

that had been discovered in the software, and its nature as a

closed platform A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This ...

controlled by Adobe.

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

co-founder

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

was highly critical of Flash Player, having published an open letter criticising the platform and detailing Apple's reasoning for not supporting Flash on its

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

device family. Its usage further waned due to more modern

web standards Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of st ...

which replaced some of Flash's functionality, reducing the need for third-party plugins. This led to the eventual deprecation of the platform. Flash Player was officially discontinued on 31 December 2020, and its download page was removed two days later. Since 12 January 2021, Flash Player (original global variants) versions newer than 32.0.0.371, released in May 2020, refuse to play Flash content and instead display a static warning message. The software remains supported in mainland China and in some enterprise variants.

Features

Adobe Flash Player is a runtime that executes and displays content from a provided SWF file, although it has no in-built features to modify the SWF file at runtime. It can execute software written in the

programming language which enables the runtime manipulation of text, data,

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

, and

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

. The player can also access certain connected hardware devices, including the web cameras and

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic (), or mike, is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and publi ...

s, after permission for the same has been granted by the user. Flash Player was used internally by the

Adobe Integrated Runtime Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and codenamed Apollo) is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile applicatio ...

(AIR), to provide a cross-platform runtime environment for

desktop applications Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

and mobile applications. AIR supports installable applications on

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and some mobile operating systems such as

and Android. Flash applications must specifically be built for the AIR runtime to use additional features provided, such as file system integration, native client extensions, native window/screen integration, taskbar/dock integration, and hardware integration with connected

Accelerometer An accelerometer is a device that measures the proper acceleration of an object. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change (mathematics), rate of change of velocity) of the object relative to an observer who is in free fall (tha ...

and

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

devices.

Data formats

Flash Player included native support for many data formats, some of which can only be accessed through the

scripting interface. * XML: Flash Player has included native support for

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

parsing and generation since version 8. XML data is held in memory as an XML

Document Object Model The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cros s-platform and language-independent API that treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with ...

, and can be manipulated using ActionScript. ActionScript 3 also supports

ECMAScript for XML ECMAScript for XML (E4X) was an extension to ECMAScript (which includes ActionScript, JavaScript, and JScript) to add native support for XML. The goal was to provide a simpler alternative to the DOM interface for accessing XML documents. E4X added ...

(E4X), which allows XML data to be manipulated more easily. * JSON: Flash Player 11 includes native support for importing and exporting data in the

JavaScript Object Notation JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of name–value pairs and arrays (or other serializ ...

(JSON) format, which allows interoperability with

web service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

s and

programs. * AMF: Flash Player allows application data to be stored on users computers, in the form of

Local Shared Object A local shared object (LSO), commonly called a Flash cookie (due to its similarity with an HTTP cookie), is a piece of data that websites that use Adobe Flash may store on a user's computer. Local shared objects have been used by all versions o ...

s, the Flash equivalent to

browser cookies HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small block of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's web bro ...

. Flash Player can also natively read and write files in the

Action Message Format Action Message Format (AMF) is a binary format used to serialize object graphs such as ActionScript objects and XML, or send messages between an Adobe Flash client and a remote service, usually a Flash Media Server or third party alternatives. T ...

, the default data format for Local Shared Objects. Since the AMF format specification is published, data can be transferred to and from Flash applications using AMF datasets instead of

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

, reducing the need for

parsing Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is a process of analyzing a String (computer science), string of Symbol (formal), symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal gramm ...

and validating such data. * SWF: The specification for the SWF file format was published by Adobe, enabling the development of the SWX Format project, which used the SWF file format and AMF as a means for Flash applications to exchange data with server side applications. The SWX system stores data as standard SWF bytecode which is automatically interpreted by Flash Player. Another

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

project, SWXml allows Flash applications to load XML files as native ActionScript objects without any client-side XML parsing, by converting XML files to SWF/AMF on the server.

Multimedia formats

Flash Player is primarily a graphics and multimedia platform, and has supported

and

since its earliest version. It supports the following different multimedia formats, which it can natively decode and play back. * MP3: Support for decoding and playback of

MPEG-2 Audio Layer III (MP3) audio was introduced in Flash Player 4. MP3 files can be accessed and played back from a server via

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

, or embedded inside an SWF file, which is also a streaming format. * FLV: Support for decoding and playing back video and audio inside Flash Video (FLV and F4V) files, a format developed by

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

and

. Flash Video is only a container format and supports multiple different video

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

s, such as

Sorenson Spark Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was licensed and ultimately acquired from Utah State University. ...

, VP6, and more recently

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and d ...

. Flash Player uses hardware acceleration to display video where present, using technologies such as

DirectX Video Acceleration DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware-accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motio ...

and

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

to do so. Flash Video is used by

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

Hulu Hulu (, ) is an American Subscription business model, subscription streaming media service owned by Disney Streaming, a subsidiary of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. It was launched on October 29, 2007, initially as ...

Yahoo! Video The company Yahoo! ran several similar video services. Yahoo! Video, a video hosting service, was established in 2006. Later, the ability to upload videos was removed, changing it to a more pure video on demand service; the website became a port ...

BBC Online BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and BBC Sport, Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, t ...

, and other news providers. FLV files can be played back from a server using

progressive download A progressive download is the transfer of digital media files from a server to a client, typically using the HTTP protocol when initiated from a computer. The consumer may begin playback of the media before the download is complete. The key diffe ...

, and can also be embedded inside an SWF file. Flash Video can also be streamed via

RTMP RTMP may refer to: * Real-Time Messaging Protocol, a multimedia streaming and remote procedure call protocol primarily used in Adobe Flash * Routing Table Maintenance Protocol, part of the AppleTalk network stack * Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeon ...

using the

Adobe Flash Media Server Adobe Media Server (AMS) is a proprietary data and media server from Adobe Systems (originally a Macromedia product). This server works with the Flash Player and HTML5 runtime to create media driven, multiuser RIAs ( Rich Internet Application ...

or other such server-side software. * PNG: Support for decoding and rendering

Portable Network Graphics Portable Network Graphics (PNG, officially pronounced , colloquially pronounced ) is a raster graphics, raster-graphics file graphics file format, format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented ...

(PNG) images, in both its 24-bit (opaque) and 32-bit (semi-transparent) variants. Flash Player 11 can also encode a PNG bitmap via ActionScript. * JPEG: Support for decoding and rendering compressed

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

images. Flash Player 10 added support for the JPEG-XR advanced image compression standard developed by

Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, which results in better compression and quality than JPEG. JPEG-XR enables

lossy In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

and

lossless Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statisti ...

compression with or without

alpha channel In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pass ...

transparency. Flash Player 11 can also encode a JPEG or JPEG-XR bitmap via ActionScript. * GIF: Support for decoding and rendering compressed

Graphics Interchange Format The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on June 15, 1987. The format can ...

(GIF) images, in its single-frame variants only. Loading a multi-frame GIF will display only the first image frame.

Streaming protocols

* HTTP: Support for communicating with

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

s using

requests and

POST Post, POST, or posting may refer to: Postal services * Mail, the postal system, especially in Commonwealth of Nations countries **An Post, the Irish national postal service **Canada Post, Canadian postal service **Deutsche Post, German postal s ...

data. However, only websites that explicitly allow Flash to connect to them can be accessed via HTTP or sockets, to prevent Flash being used as a tool for

cross-site request forgery Cross-site request forgery, also known as one-click attack or session riding and abbreviated as CSRF (sometimes pronounced ''sea-surf'') or XSRF, is a type of malicious exploit of a website or web application where unauthorized commands are submit ...

cross-site scripting Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of security vulnerability that can be found in some web applications. XSS attacks enable attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users. A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be ...

, DNS rebinding, and

denial-of-service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host co ...

s. Websites must host a certain XML file termed a ''cross domain policy'',Policy file changes in Flash Player 9 and Flash Player 10
, Adobe allowing or denying Flash content from specific websites to connect to them. Certain websites, such as

Digg Digg (stylized in lowercase as digg) is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select articles specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral phenomenon, viral Internet iss ...

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

, and

Photobucket Photobucket is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community based in Denver, Colorado, United States. Photobucket once hosted more than 10 billion images from 100 million registered members. Li ...

already host a cross domain policy that permits Flash content to access their website via HTTP. * RTMP: Support for live audio and video streaming using the

Real-Time Messaging Protocol Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) is a communication protocol for streaming audio, video, and data over the Internet. Originally developed as a proprietary protocol by Macromedia for streaming between Flash Player and the Flash Communication Se ...

(RTMP) developed by

. RTMP supports a non-encrypted version over the

Transmission Control Protocol The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main communications protocol, protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, th ...

(TCP) or an encrypted version over a secure

Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network, such as the Internet. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over ...

(SSL) connection. RTMPT can also be encapsulated within

requests to traverse firewalls that only allow HTTP traffic. * TCP: Support for

(TCP) Internet socket communication to communicate with any type of server, using

stream socket A network socket is a software structure within a network node of a computer network that serves as an endpoint for sending and receiving data across the network. The structure and properties of a socket are defined by an application programming ...

s. Sockets can be used only via

, and can transfer

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...

, or binary data (ActionScript 3.0 or later). To prevent security issues, web servers that permit Flash content to communicate with them using sockets must host an

-based cross domain policy file, served on

Port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...

843. Sockets enable AS3 programs to interface with any kind of server software, such as

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

Performance

Hardware acceleration

Until version 10 of the Flash player, there was no support for

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

acceleration. Version 10 added a limited form of support for

shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene—a process known as '' shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of s ...

s on materials in the form of the Pixel Bender API, but still did not have GPU-accelerated 3D vertex processing. A significant change came in version 11, which added a new low-level API called

Stage3D Stage3D (codenamed ''Molehill'') is an Adobe Flash Player API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration, within Flash games and applications. Flash Player or AIR applications written in ActionScript 3 may use Stage3D to render ...

(initially codenamed Molehill), which provides full GPU acceleration, similar to

WebGL WebGL (short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript Application programming interface, API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-in (computing), plug-ins. WebGL is fully integra ...

. (The partial support for GPU acceleration in Pixel Bender was completely removed in Flash 11.8, resulting in the disruption of some projects like MIT's Scratch, which lacked the manpower to recode their applications quickly enough.) Current versions of Flash Player are optimized to use

hardware acceleration Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calcula ...

for video playback and 3D graphics rendering on many devices, including desktop computers. Performance is similar to

HTML video HTML video is a subject of the HTML specification as the standard way of playing video via the web. Introduced in HTML5, it is designed to partially replace the object element and the previous de facto standard of using the proprietary Adobe Fla ...

playback. Also, Flash Player has been used on multiple mobile devices as a primary user interface renderer.

Compilation

Although code written in ActionScript 3 executes up to 10 times faster than the prior ActionScript 2, the Adobe ActionScript 3 compiler is a non-

optimizing compiler An optimizing compiler is a compiler designed to generate code that is optimized in aspects such as minimizing program execution time, memory usage, storage size, and power consumption. Optimization is generally implemented as a sequence of op ...

, and produces inefficient bytecode in the resulting SWF, when compared to toolkits such as

CrossBridge CrossBridge is an open-source toolset developed by Adobe Systems, that cross-compiles C and C++ code to run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR. Projects compiled with CrossBridge run up to 10 times faster than ActionScript 3 projects.Alchemy:FAQ
, Adobe LabsOptimizing ActionScript Bytecode using LLVM
, AdobeAdobe Alchemy, is it ActionScript heresy?
, Unit Zero One

LLVM LLVM, also called LLVM Core, is a target-independent optimizer and code generator. It can be used to develop a Compiler#Front end, frontend for any programming language and a Compiler#Back end, backend for any instruction set architecture. LLVM i ...

compiler to produce bytecode that runs up to 10 times faster than code the ActionScript 3 compiler produces, only because the LLVM compiler uses more aggressive optimization. Adobe has released ActionScript Compiler 2 (ASC2) in Flex 4.7 and onwards, which improves compilation times and optimizes the generated bytecode and supports method inlining, improving its performance at runtime. As of 2012, the

Haxe Haxe is a high-level cross-platform programming language and compiler that can produce applications and source code for many different computing platforms from one code-base. It is free and open-source software, released under an MIT License. ...

multiplatform language can build programs for Flash Player that perform faster than the same application built with the Adobe Flex SDK compiler.

Development methods

Flash Player applications and games can be built in two significantly different methods: * "Flex" applications: The

Adobe Flex Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich web applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe Syste ...

Framework is an integrated collection of stylable

, data manipulation and networking components, and applications built upon it are termed "Flex" applications. Startup time is reduced since the Flex framework must be downloaded before the application begins, and weighs in at approximately 500 KB. Editors include

and FlashDevelop. * "Pure ActionScript" applications: Applications built without the Flex framework allow greater flexibility and performance. Video games built for Flash Player are typically pure-Actionscript projects. Various open-source component frameworks are available for pure ActionScript projects, such as ''MadComponents'', that provide UI Components at significantly smaller SWF file sizes. In both methods, developers can access the full Flash Player set of functions, including

text Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory) In literary theory, a text is any object that can be "read", whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothi ...

bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

graphics,

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

, camera, microphone, and others. AIR also includes added features such as file system integration, native extensions, native desktop integration, and hardware integration with connected devices.

Development tools

Adobe provides five ways of developing applications for Flash Player: *

Adobe Animate Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash Professional, Macromedia Flash, and FutureSplash Animator) is a multimedia authoring and computer animation program developed by Adobe. Animate is used to design vector graphics and animation for television ...

: graphic design, animation and scripting toolset *

: enterprise application development and debugging * Adobe Scout: visual profiler for performance optimization *

Apache Flex Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich web applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe System ...

: a free SDK to compile Flash and

Adobe AIR Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and codenamed Apollo) is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile application ...

applications from source code; developed by Adobe and donated to the Apache Foundation *

CrossBridge CrossBridge is an open-source toolset developed by Adobe Systems, that cross-compiles C and C++ code to run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR. Projects compiled with CrossBridge run up to 10 times faster than ActionScript 3 projects.cross-compile A cross compiler is a compiler capable of creating executable code for a platform other than the one on which the compiler is running. For example, a compiler that runs on a PC but generates code that runs on Android devices is a cross compil ...

C++ code to run in Flash Player Third-party development environments are also available: * FlashDevelop: an open-source Flash ActionScript IDE, which includes a debugger for AIR applications *

Powerflasher FDT Powerflasher FDT is an integrated development environment (IDE) built on the Eclipse platform for development of Adobe Flash-based content. FDT enables development of content such as video games, rich web applications and Adobe AIR applications, i ...

: a commercial ActionScript IDE * CodeDrive: an extension to

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms ...

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

for ActionScript 3 development and debugging *

MTASC MTASC (Motion-Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler) is an ActionScript 2.0 compiler written in the OCaml programming language by the company Motion Twin. It is free software and can be used alone or with other tools like swfmill to produce SWF files, ...

: a compiler *

: a multi-platform language

Game development

Adobe offers the free Adobe Gaming SDK, consisting () of several open-source AS3 libraries built on the Flash Player

APIs for GPU-accelerated graphics: *

Away3D Away3D is an open-source platform for developing interactive 3D graphics for video games and applications, in Adobe Flash or HTML5. The platform consists of a 3D world editor (Away Builder),

: GPU-accelerated 3D graphics and animation engine *

Starling Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine (perching) birds known for the often dark, glossy iridescent sheen of their plumage; their complex vocalizations including mimicking; and their distinctive, often elaborate swarming behavior, know ...

: GPU-accelerated 2D graphics that mimics the Flash display list API * Feathers: GPU-accelerated skinnable

GUI Gui or GUI may refer to: People Surname * Gui (surname), an ancient Chinese surname, ''xing'' * Bernard Gui (1261 or 1262–1331), inquisitor of the Dominican Order * Luigi Gui (1914–2010), Italian politician * Gui Minhai (born 1964), Ch ...

library built on top of Starling * Dragon Bones: GPU-accelerated 2D

skeletal animation Skeletal animation or rigging is a technique in computer animation in which a character (or other articulated object) is represented in two parts: a polygonal or parametric mesh representation of the surface of the object, and a hierarchical set ...

library A few commercial

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games which generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term " software engine" u ...

s target Flash Player (Stage3D) as run-time environment, such as

Unity 3D Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a MacOS, Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a ...

and

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of ...

3. Before the introduction of Stage3D, a number of older 2D engines or isometric engines like Flixel saw their heyday. Adobe also developed the

and GCC as compiler backends, and high-performance memory-access

opcode In computing, an opcode (abbreviated from operation code) is an enumerated value that specifies the operation to be performed. Opcodes are employed in hardware devices such as arithmetic logic units (ALUs), central processing units (CPUs), and ...

s in the Flash Player (termed "Domain Memory") to work with in-memory data quickly. CrossBridge is targeted toward the

game development game development (sometimes shortened to gamedev) is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more specialize ...

industry, and includes tools for building, testing, and debugging C/C++ projects in Flash Player. Notable online video games developed in Flash include ''

Angry Birds ''Angry Birds'' is a Finnish media franchise created by Rovio Entertainment, and owned by Sega. The game series focuses on the titular flock of colorful angry birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. Inspired by the game ''Cr ...

'', ''

FarmVille ''FarmVille'' is a series of agriculture-simulation social network games developed and published by Zynga in 2009. It is similar to '' Happy Farm'' and ''Farm Town''. Its gameplay involves various aspects of farmland management, such as plo ...

'', and '' AdventureQuest'' (started in 2002, and still active as of 2020).

Availability

Desktop platforms

Adobe Flash Player is available in two major versions: # The plugin version for use in various

s # The "projector" version is a standalone player that can open SWF files directly. On February 22, 2012, Adobe announced that it would no longer release new versions of NPAPI Flash plugins for Linux, although Flash Player 11.2 would continue to receive security updates. In August 2016, Adobe announced that, beginning with version 24, it would resume offering of Flash Player for Linux for other browsers. The Extended Support Release (ESR) of Flash Player on macOS and Windows was a version of Flash Player kept up to date with security updates, but none of the new features or bug fixes available in later versions. In August 2016, Adobe discontinued the ESR branch and instead focused solely on the standard release. Version 10 can be run under Windows 98/Me using KernelEx. HP offered Version 6 of the player for

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...

, while Innotek GmbH offered versions 4 and 5 for

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

. Other versions of the player have been available at some point for

BeOS BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...

Mobile platforms

In 2011, Flash Player had emerged as the de facto standard for online video publishing on the desktop, with adaptive bitrate video streaming,

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement militair ...

, and fullscreen support.Flash and the HTML5 <video> tag
, YouTube BlogPardon Our Dust
, Hulu Blog On mobile devices, however, after

refused to allow the Flash Player within

's integrated web browser, Adobe changed its strategy, enabling Flash content to be delivered as native mobile applications using the

. Up until 2012, Flash Player 11 was available for the Android (ARM Cortex-A8 and above), although in June 2012, Google announced that Android 4.1 (codenamed Jelly Bean) would not support Flash by default. In August 2012, Adobe stopped updating Flash for Android. Flash Player was supported on a select range of mobile and tablet devices, from Acer,

BlackBerry 10 BlackBerry 10 (BB10) is a proprietary mobile operating system for the BlackBerry line of smartphones, both developed by BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion). Released in January 2013, BlackBerry 10 is a complete rework from t ...

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

HTC HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t), or High Tech Computer Corporation (abbreviated and trading as HTC), is a Taiwanese consumer electronics corporatio ...

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( , zh, c=联想, p=Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, conv ...

Logitech Logitech International S.A. ( ) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the company has offices throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. It is a component of ...

, LG,

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

, Sharp,

SoftBank is a Japanese multinational Investment company, investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, that focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services ...

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

(and

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc., originally Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, was a Multinational corporation, multinational consumer electronics and telecommunications company, best known for its Mobile phones, mobile phone products. The ...

), and

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

. As of 2012, Adobe has stopped browser-based Flash Player development for mobile browsers in favor of

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

;Adobe abandons Flash Player on mobile browsers for HTML5
CBS News
; The Telegraph however, Adobe continues to support Flash content on mobile devices with the Adobe Integrated Runtime, which allows developers to publish content that runs as native applications on certain supported mobile phone platforms. Adobe said it will optimize Flash for use on

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer, RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for central processing unit, com ...

(ARMv7 and ARMv6 architectures used in the Cortex-A series of processors and in the ARM11 family) and release it in the second half of 2009. The company also stated it wants to enable Flash on

NVIDIA Tegra Tegra is a system on a chip (SoC) series developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. The Tegra integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit (CPU), graphics p ...

Texas Instruments OMAP OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) is a family of image processor, image/video processors that was developed by Texas Instruments. They are proprietary system on chips (SoCs) for portable and mobile multimedia application software, ap ...

3, and Samsung ARMs. Beginning 2009, it was announced that Adobe would be bringing Flash to

TV set A television set or television receiver (more commonly called TV, TV set, television, telly, or tele) is an electronic device for viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or as a computer monitor. It combines a tuner, display, and loudspeake ...

s via

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Media Processor CE 3100 before mid-2009.

ARM Holdings Arm Holdings plc (formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England, whose primary business is the design of central processing ...

later said it welcomes the move of Flash, because "it will transform mobile applications and it removes the claim that the desktop controls the Internet." However, as of May 2009, the expected ARM/Linux

netbook A netbook is a small-sized laptop computer; they were primarily sold from 2007 until around 2013, designed mostly as a means of accessing the Internet and being significantly less expensive than regular-sized laptops. At their inception in l ...

devices had poor support for Web video and fragmented software base. Among other devices,

LeapFrog Enterprises LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. is an educational entertainment and electronics company based in Emeryville, California. LeapFrog designs, develops, and markets technology-based learning products and related content for the education of children f ...

provides Flash Player with their Leapster Multimedia Learning System and extended the Flash Player with touch-screen support. Version 9 was the most recent version available for the Linux/

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

-based

Nokia 770 The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is a wireless Internet appliance from Nokia, originally announced at the LinuxWorld Summit in New York City on 25 May 2005. It is designed for wireless Internet browsing and email functions and includes software su ...

N800 The Nokia N800 Internet tablet is a wireless Internet appliance from Nokia, originally announced at the Las Vegas CES 2007 Summit in January 2007. N800 allows the user to browse the Internet and communicate using Wi-Fi networks or with mobile ...

N810 The Nokia N810 Internet tablet is an Internet appliance from Nokia, announced on 17 October 2007 at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Despite Nokia's strong association with cellular products, the N810, like preceding tablets produced by No ...

Internet tablets running

Maemo Maemo is a Linux-based software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the Free software movement, community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and Software development ...

OS2008.Web Players
. Adobe. Retrieved on March 11, 2011. Other versions of the player have been available at some point for

Symbian OS Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

and

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

. The Kodak Easyshare One includes Flash Player. The following table documents historical support for Flash Player on

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system used for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on the ...

Other hardware

Some CPU

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

s have been created for Flash Player, including Chip8,

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

, and the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

. They enable video games created for such platforms to run within Flash Player.

End of life

Adobe announced on July 25, 2017, that it would end support for the normal/global variant of Flash Player on January 1, 2021, and encouraged developers to use

standards in place of Flash. The announcement was coordinated with

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, and

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

. Adobe announced that all major web browsers planned to officially remove the Adobe Flash Player component on December 31, 2020, and Microsoft removed it from the Windows OS in January 2021 via

Windows Update Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of the Microsoft Windows operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers sof ...

. In a move to further reduce the number of Flash Player installations, Adobe added a "time bomb" to Flash to disable existing installations after January 12, 2021. In mid-2020, Flash Player started prompting users to uninstall itself. Adobe removed all existing download links for Flash installers. After January 26, 2021, all major web browsers including

Apple Safari Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc., Apple. It is built into several of List of Apple operating systems, Apple's operating systems, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS, and uses Apple's open-source software, open-source bro ...

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft and based on the Chromium (web browser), Chromium open-source project, superseding Edge Legacy. In Windows 11, Edge ...

, and

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

have already permanently removed Flash support. However,

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...

content continues to be accessible on the web through emulators such as

Ruffle Ruffle or ruffles may refer to: *Ruffle (sewing), a gathered or pleated strip of fabric *Ruffle (software), a Flash Player emulator written in the Rust programming language *Ruffles (potato chips), a brand of potato chips *Ruffles and flourishes, ...

, with varying degrees of compatibility and performance, although this is not endorsed by

Web browsers

= Google Chrome

= Starting from Chrome 76, Flash is disabled by default without any prompts to activate Flash content. Users who wanted to play Flash content had to manually set a browser to prompt for Flash content, and then during each browser session, enable Flash plugin for every site individually. Microsoft Edge, which is based on Chromium, followed the same plan as Google Chrome. Google Chrome blocked the Flash plugin as "out of date" in January 2021, and fully removed it from the browser with Chrome version 88, released on January 20, 2021.

= Mozilla Firefox

= Starting with Firefox 85, Flash is disabled by default without any prompts to activate Flash content. To play Flash content, users had to manually set a browser to prompt for Flash content, and then during each browser session enable Flash plugin for every site individually. Firefox 85, released on January 26, 2021, completely removed support for the Flash plugin. Firefox ESR dropped support on November 2, 2021 (Firefox 78 ESR was the last version with support).

= Microsoft Windows

= On October 27, 2020, Microsoft released an update (named KB4577586) for Windows 10 and 8.1 which removes the embedded Adobe Flash Player component from

IE11 Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is the eleventh and final version of the Internet Explorer web browser, by now retired. It was initially included in the release of Windows 8.1, Windows RT, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on October 17, 2013 ...

and Edge Legacy. In July 2021, this update was automatically installed as a security patch. However, an

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

Flash Player plugin may still be used with IE after this update is applied.

= Apple Safari

= Apple dropped Flash Player support from Safari 14 alongside the release of

macOS Big Sur macOS Big Sur (version 11) is the seventeenth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and w ...

Fallout

Despite the years of notice, several websites still were using Flash following December 31, 2020, including the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

. Many of these were resolved in the weeks after the deadline. However, many educational institutions still relied on Flash for educational material and did not have a path forward for replacement.

Post-EOL support

= Mainland China

= The China-specific variant of Flash is still supported, by a company known as Zhongcheng. The Projector (standalone) versions of this variant also work outside of China and do not include the "Flash Helper Service"; however, some tracking code still seems to be present. They are available on a somewhat hidden "Debug" page. In addition, as the global variant of the plugin was discontinued, some users have figured how to modify and repack the China-specific variant to bring it more in line with the global variant. This includes removing the "Flash Helper Service" and removing the China only installation restriction, along with all other geo-restrictions and tracking code. A "time bomb", similar to the one found in later versions of the global variant, is also present in the unmodified China variant; this is also removed in most repacks. In theory, these repacks should provide users outside of China with the latest security updates to Flash Player, without having to deal with invasive advertisements or worry about privacy risks. One such project, "Clean Flash Installer", was served a

DMCA takedown The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) is United States federal law that creates a conditional 'safe harbor' for online service providers (OSP), a group which includes Internet service providers (ISP) and other Inter ...

from Adobe in October 2021.

= Enterprise

= Adobe has partnered with Harman to support enterprise Flash Player users until at least 2023. The Harman Flash player variant is labeled as version 50.x, to avoid confusion with other variants.

= Web browsers

= Internet Explorer 11, along with IE mode in

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

, will continue with ActiveX support, and by extension Flash Player support. Firefox

forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a Eating utensil, utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with whic ...

that plan to continue

NPAPI Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is a deprecated application programming interface (API) for web browser plugins, initially developed for Netscape Navigator 2.0 in 1995 and subsequently adopted by other browsers. In the ...

support, and by extension Flash Player support, include

Basilisk In European bestiary, bestiaries and legends, a basilisk ( or ) is a legendary reptile reputed to be a Serpent symbolism, serpent king, who causes death to those who look into its eyes. According to the ''Natural History (Pliny), Naturalis Histo ...

Pale Moon Pale Moon is a free and open-source web browser licensed under the MPL-2.0 with an emphasis on customization. There are official releases for Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux. Pale Moon originated as a fork of Firefox, but has subs ...

K-Meleon K-Meleon is a free and open-source, lightweight web browser for Microsoft Windows. It uses the native Windows API to create its user interface. Early versions of K-Meleon rendered web pages with Gecko, Mozilla's browser layout engine, which Moz ...

, and Waterfox Classic. Various

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

-based Chinese browsers will also continue to support Flash Player in

PPAPI Google Native Client (NaCl) is a discontinued sandboxing technology for running either a subset of Intel x86, ARM, or MIPS native code, or a portable executable, in a sandbox. It allows safely running native code from a web browser, independe ...

and/or NPAPI form, including, but not limited to,

360 Secure Browser 360 Secure Browser (360 Security Browser) or 360 Safe Browser ( zh, s=360安全浏览器) is a web browser developed by the Qihoo company of Beijing, China. Version 1.0 was released in July 2008 (first non-beta release; first beta in changelo ...

. Shortly after Flash reached end-of-life, South African Revenue Service (SARS) released a custom version of the Chromium browser with the Adobe Flash Player "time bomb" removed. This browser can access only a small set of SARS online pages containing Flash-based forms required for filing financial reports.

= Adobe Flash Player Projector

= Although no longer available directly from Adobe, all versions of Adobe Flash Player Projector (also known as Adobe Flash Player Standalone) lack the "time bomb" present in the newer plug-in variants, and thus continue to be able to play all supported Flash

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

s, including SWF files, without modification.

= Content preservation projects

= The

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

hosts some Flash content and makes it playable in modern browsers via the

emulator integrated within its Emularity system. Other emulators, such as CheerpX, also exist as options for Flash Player emulation on other websites. The

Flashpoint Archive Flashpoint Archive (formerly BlueMaxima's Flashpoint) is an Archive, archival and Preservation (library and archive), preservation project that allows Browser game, browser games, Web animation, web animations and other general Rich web applicat ...

project claims to have collected more than 38,000 Adobe Flash Player games and animations and made them available for download.

Open source

Adobe has released some components of Adobe Flash products as open source software via Open Screen Project or donated them to open source organizations. As of 2021, most of these technologies are considered obsolete. This includes: ActionScript Virtual Machine 2 (AVM2) which implements

ActionScript 3 ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meani ...

(donated as open-source to

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Open-source software, open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

), Adobe Flex Framework (donated as open-source to the

Apache Software Foundation The Apache Software Foundation ( ; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the ...

and rebranded as

, superseded by Apache Royale),

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

).Open Source Flash C++ Compiler, CrossBridge
, Adobe Blogs, June 25, 2013

Criticism

Accessibility and usability

In some browsers, prior Flash versions have had to be uninstalled before an updated version could be installed. However, as of version 11.2 for Windows, there are now automatic updater options. Linux is partially supported, as Adobe is cooperating with Google to implement it via Chrome web browser on all Linux platforms. Mixing Flash applications with HTML leads to inconsistent input handling leading to poor user experience with the site (keyboard and mouse not working as they would in an HTML-only document).

Privacy

Flash Player supports persistent local storage of data (also referred to as

s), which can be used similarly to

HTTP cookie HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small block of data (computing), data created by a web server while a user (computing), user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer o ...

s or

Web Storage Web storage, formerly known as DOM storage (Document Object Model storage), is a standard JavaScript API provided by web browsers. It enables websites to store persistent data on users' devices similar to cookies, but with much larger capacity ...

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

s. Local storage in Flash Player allows websites to store non-executable data on a user's computer, such as authentication information, game high scores or web browser games, server-based session identifiers, site preferences, saved work, or temporary files. Flash Player will only allow content originating from exactly the same website

domain A domain is a geographic area controlled by a single person or organization. Domain may also refer to: Law and human geography * Demesne, in English common law and other Medieval European contexts, lands directly managed by their holder rather ...

to access data saved in local storage. Because local storage can be used to save information on a computer that is later retrieved by the same site, a site can use it to gather user statistics, similar to how HTTP cookies and Web Storage can be used. With such technologies, the possibility of building a profile based on user statistics is considered by some a potential privacy concern. Users can disable or restrict use of local storage in Flash Player through a "Settings Manager" page. These settings can be accessed from the Adobe website or by right-clicking on Flash-based content and selecting "Global Settings". Local storage can be disabled entirely or on a site-by-site basis. Disabling local storage will block any content from saving local user information using Flash Player, but this may disable or reduce the functionality of some websites, such as saved preferences or high scores and saved progress in games. Flash Player 10.1 and upward honor the privacy mode settings in the latest versions of the Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari web browsers, such that no local storage data is saved when the browser's privacy mode is in use.

Security

Adobe security bulletins and advisories announce security updates, but Adobe Flash Player release notes do not disclose the security issues addressed when a release closes security holes, making it difficult to evaluate the urgency of a particular update. A version test page allows the user to check if the latest version is installed, and

uninstaller An uninstaller, also called a deinstaller, is a variety of utility software designed to remove other software or parts of it from a computer. It is the opposite of an installer. Uninstallers are useful primarily when software components are instal ...

s may be used to ensure that old-version plugins have been uninstalled from all installed browsers. In February 2010, Adobe officially apologized for not fixing a known vulnerability for over a year. In June 2010 Adobe announced a "critical vulnerability" in recent versions, saying there are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Later, in October 2010, Adobe announced another critical vulnerability, this time also affecting Android-based mobile devices. Android users have been recommended to disable Flash or make it only on demand. Subsequent security vulnerabilities also exposed Android users, such as the two critical vulnerabilities published in February 2013 or the four critical vulnerabilities published in March 2013, all of which could lead to arbitrary code execution.

Symantec Symantec may refer to: * Gen Digital, an American consumer software company formerly known as Symantec * Symantec Security, a brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, ...

's Internet Security Threat Report states that a

remote code execution In computer security, arbitrary code execution (ACE) is an attacker's ability to run any commands or code of the attacker's choice on a target machine or in a target process. An arbitrary code execution vulnerability is a security flaw in softwar ...

Adobe Reader Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (former ...

and Flash Player was the second most attacked vulnerability in 2009. The same report also recommended using

browser extension A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and st ...

s to disable Flash Player usage on untrusted websites.

McAfee McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American proprietary software company focused on online ...

predicted that Adobe software, especially Reader and Flash, would be primary target for attacks in 2010. Adobe applications had become, at least at some point, the most popular client-software targets for attackers during the last quarter of 2009. The

Kaspersky Kaspersky Lab (; ) is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky and A ...

Security Network published statistics for the third quarter of 2012 showing that 47.5% of its users were affected by one or more critical vulnerabilities. The report also highlighted that "Flash Player vulnerabilities enable cybercriminals to bypass security systems integrated into the application." Steve Jobs criticized the security of Flash Player, noting that "Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009." Adobe responded by pointing out that "the Symantec Global Internet Threat Report for 2009, found that Flash Player had the second lowest number of vulnerabilities of all Internet technologies listed (which included both web plug-ins and browsers)." On April 7, 2016, Adobe released a Flash Player patch for a zero-day memory corruption vulnerability that could be used to deliver

malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...

via the Magnitude exploit kit. The vulnerability could be exploited for

Vendor lock-in

Flash Player 11.2 does not play certain kinds of content unless it has been digitally signed by Adobe, following a license obtained by the publisher directly from Adobe. This move by Adobe, together with the abandonment of Flex to Apache was criticized as a way to lock out independent tool developers, in favor of Adobe's commercial tools. This has been resolved as of January 2013, after Adobe no longer requires a license or royalty from the developer. All premium features are now classified as general availability, and can be freely used by Flash applications.

Apple controversy

In April 2010,

, at the time CEO of

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

published an open letter explaining why Apple would not support Flash on the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a po ...

, and

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

. In the letter he blamed problems with the "openness", stability, security, performance, and

touchscreen A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...

integration of the Flash Player as reasons for refusing to support it. He also claimed that when one of Apple's

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

computers crashes, "more often than not" the cause can be attributed to Flash, and described Flash as "buggy". Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen responded by saying, "If Flash sthe number one reason that Macs crash, which I'm not aware of, it has as much to do with the Apple operating system." Steve Jobs also claimed that a large percentage of the video on the Internet is supported on iOS, since many popular video sharing websites such as YouTube have published video content in an

compatible format, enabling videos to playback in mobile web browsers even without Flash Player.

Mainland China–specific variant

Starting with version 30, Adobe stopped distributing Flash Player directly to users from mainland China. Instead, they selected 2144.cn as a partner and released a special variant of Flash Player on a specific website, which contains a non-closable process, known as the "Flash Helper Service", that collects private information and pops up advertisement window contents, by receiving and running encrypted programs from a remote server. The partnership started in about 2017, but in version 30, Adobe disabled the usage of vanilla (global) variant of Flash Player in mainland China, forcing users to use that specific variant, which may pose a risk to its users due to

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as ''Wikipedia.org'', for example) but exceptionally may ...

by the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

(CCP). This only affected Chinese

based browser users,

users, and

users using

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

and below, as Microsoft still directly distributed Flash Player for Internet Explorer and

through

in Windows 8 and upward at the time. Starting in 2021, however, this variant is the only publicly supported version of Flash Player.

Release history

* FutureSplash Player 1.1 ** New scripting features ** Option to disable the menu and memory management optimizations * Macromedia Flash Player 2 (June 17, 1997) ** Mostly vectors and motion, some

s, limited audio ** Support of stereo sound, enhanced bitmap integration, buttons, the Library, and the ability to

tween Preadolescence is a stage of human development following middle childhood and preceding adolescence.New Oxford American Dictionary. 2nd Edition. 2005. Oxford University Press. It commonly ends with the beginning of puberty. Preadolescence is c ...

color changes * Macromedia Flash Player 3 (May 31, 1998) ** Added alpha transparency, licensed MP3 compression ** Brought improvements to animation, playback, digital art, and publishing, as well as the introduction of simple script commands for interactivity * Macromedia Flash Player 4 (June 15, 1999) ** Saw the introduction of

MP3s and the Motion Tween. Initially, the Flash Player plug-in was not bundled with popular web browsers and users had to visit Macromedia website to download it. As of 2000, however, the Flash Player was already being distributed with all

AOL AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...

and

browsers. Two years later it shipped with all releases of

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

. The install-base of the Flash Player reached 92 percent of all Internet users. * Macromedia Flash Player 5 (August 24, 2000) ** A major advance in ability, with the evolution of Flash's scripting abilities as released as ActionScript ** Saw the ability to customize the authoring environment's

interface Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Inter ...

** Macromedia Generator was the first initiative from Macromedia to separate design from content in Flash files. Generator 2.0 was released in April 2001, and featured real-time server-side generation of Flash content in its Enterprise Edition. Generator was discontinued in 2002, in favor of new technologies such as Flash Remoting, which allows for seamless transmission of data between the server and the client, and

ColdFusion Adobe ColdFusion is a commercial rapid web-application development computing platform created by J. J. Allaire in 1995. (The programming language used with that platform is also commonly called ColdFusion, though is more accurately known as CF ...

Server. ** In October 2000,

usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...

guru Jakob Nielsen wrote a polemic article regarding usability of Flash content entitled
Flash: 99% Bad
. (Macromedia later hired Nielsen to help them improve Flash usability.) Flash logo

* Macromedia Flash Player 6 (version 6.0.21.0, codenamed ''

Exorcist In some religions, an exorcist (from the Greek „ἐξορκιστής“) is a person who is believed to be able to cast out the devil or performs the ridding of demons or other supernatural beings who are alleged to have possessed a person ...

'') (March 15, 2002) ** Support for the consuming Flash Remoting ( AMF) and Web Service (SOAP) ** Supports ondemand/live audio and video streaming (

) ** Support for screenreaders via Microsoft Active Accessibility ** Added

video

for Flash Video ** Support for video, application components, shared libraries, and accessibility ** Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX, also released in 2002, allowed video to be streamed to Flash Player 6 (otherwise the video could be embedded into the Flash movie). * Macromedia Flash Player 7 (version 7.0.14.0, codenamed ''Mojo'') (September 10, 2003) ** Supports progressive audio and video streaming (

) ** Supports ActionScript 2.0, an object-oriented programming language for developers ** Ability to create charts, graphs and additional text effects with the new support for extensions (sold separately), high fidelity import of

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

and

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and Computer-aided design, design software developed and marketed by Adobe Inc., Adobe. Originally designed for the Apple Inc., Apple Mac (computer), Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began ...

10 files, mobile and device development and a forms-based development environment. ActionScript 2.0 was also introduced, giving developers a formal object-oriented approach to ActionScript. V2 Components replaced Flash MX's components, being rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of ActionScript 2.0 and object-oriented principles. ** In 2004, the "Flash Platform" was introduced. This expanded Flash to more than the Flash authoring tool. Flex 1.0 and

Breeze Breeze often refers to: * A gentle to moderate wind * Sea breeze, an onshore afternoon wind, caused by warm air rising over the land in sunny weather Breeze or The Breeze may also refer to: Places * Breeze Center, a shopping center in Songshan ...

1.0 were released, both of which used the Flash Player as a delivery method but relied on tools other than the Flash authoring program to create Flash applications and presentations. Flash Lite 1.1 was also released, enabling mobile phones to play Flash content. ** Last version for Windows 95/NT4 and Mac Classic * Macromedia Flash Player 8 (version 8.0.22.0, codenamed ''

Maelstrom Maelstrom may refer to: * Maelstrom (whirlpool), a powerful whirlpool ** originally the Moskstraumen in English Amusement rides * Maelstrom (ride), a former log flume dark ride attraction in the Epcot theme park at Walt Disney World Resort ...

'') (September 13, 2005) ** Support for runtime loading of GIF and PNG images ** New video codec (

On2 On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company (on the American Stock Exchange), founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. ...

VP6) ** Improved runtime performance and runtime bitmap caching ** Live filters and blendmodes ** File upload and download abilities ** New text-rendering engine, the Saffron Type System ** ExternalAPI subsystem introduced to replace fscommand ** On December 3, 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia and its product portfolio (including Flash). * Macromedia Flash Player 8 (version 8.0.24.0) (April 23, 2006) * Adobe Flash Player 9 (version 9.0.15.0, codenamed '' Zaphod'' and formerly named Flash Player 8.5) (June 22, 2006) ** Introduction of ActionScript Virtual Machine 2 (AVM2) with AVM1 retained for compatibility ** ActionScript 3 (a superset of ECMAScript 3) via AVM2 **

E4X ECMAScript for XML (E4X) was an extension to ECMAScript (which includes ActionScript, JavaScript, and JScript) to add native support for XML. The goal was to provide a simpler alternative to the Document Object Model, DOM interface for accessing XML ...

, which is a new approach to parsing XML ** Support for binary sockets ** Support for

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as rational expression, is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

s and namespaces ** AVM2 donated to

as open-source virtual machine named

Tamarin The tamarins are squirrel-sized New World monkeys from the family Callitrichidae in the genus ''Saguinus''. They are the first offshoot in the Callitrichidae tree, and therefore are the sister group of a clade formed by the lion tamarins, Go ...

* Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 1 (version 9.0.28.0, codenamed '' Marvin'') (November 9, 2006) ** Support for fullscreen mode * Adobe Flash Player 9 (version 9.0.45.0) (March 27, 2007) ** Support for Creative Suite 3. * Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 2 (version Mac/Windows 9.0.47.0 and Linux 9.0.48.0, codenamed '' Hotblack'') (June 11, 2007) ** Security update * Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 (version 9.0.115.0, codenamed ''Moviestar'' or ''Frogstar'') (December 2007) **

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...

(

HE-AAC High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) is an audio coding format for lossy data compression of digital audio as part of the MPEG-4 standards. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC (AAC-LC) optimized for low- bitrate applicati ...

, AAC Main Profile, and AAC-LC) ** New Flash Video file format F4V based on the

ISO base media file format The ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio. It is standardized in ISO/ IEC 14496-12, a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 12, and w ...

(MPEG-4 Part 12) ** Support for container formats based on the ISO base media file formatAdobe Systems Incorporated (December 3, 2007
List of codecs supported by Adobe Flash Player
, Retrieved on August 5, 2009 ** Last version for Windows 98/ME and other platforms * Adobe Flash Player 10 (version 10.0.12.36, codenamed ''Astro'') (October 15, 2008) ** ''New features'' *** 3D object transformations *** Custom filters via Pixel Bender *** Advanced text support ***

Speex {{More citations needed, date=May 2025 The Speex project is an attempt to create a free software speech codec, unencumbered by patent restrictions. Speex is licensed under the BSD License and is used with the Xiph.org Foundation's Ogg containe ...

audio codec *** Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) *** Dynamic sound generation *** Vector data type ** ''Enhanced features'' *** Larger bitmap support *** Graphics drawing API *** Context menu *** Hardware acceleration *** Anti-aliasing engine (Saffron 3.1) *** Read/write clipboard access *** WMODE * Adobe Flash Player 10 (version 10.0.32.18) (July 27, 2009) * Adobe Flash Player 10 (version 10.0.42.34) (November 16, 2009) * Adobe Flash Player 10 (version 10.0.45.2) (February 21, 2010) * Adobe Flash Player 10.1 (version 10.1.53.64, codenamed ''

Argo In Greek mythology, the ''Argo'' ( ; ) was the ship of Jason and the Argonauts. The ship was built with divine aid, and some ancient sources describe her as the first ship to sail the seas. The ''Argo'' carried the Argonauts on their quest fo ...

'') (June 10, 2010) ** Reuse of bitmap data copies for better memory management ** Improved garbage collector ** Hardware-based H.264 video decoding ** HTTP Dynamic Streaming ** Peer-assisted networking and multicast ** Support for browser privacy modes ** Multi-touch APIs ** ''For Macs/OSX 10.4 ppc or later'' *** Using Cocoa UI for Macs *** Use of double-buffered OpenGL context for fullscreen *** Use of Core Animation * Adobe Flash Player 10.2 (version 10.2.152.26, codenamed ''Spicy'') (February 8, 2011) ** Stage Video, a full hardware-accelerated video pipeline **

Internet Explorer 9 Internet Explorer 9 or IE9 (officially Windows Internet Explorer 9) is the ninth major version of the Internet Explorer web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on March 14, 2011, as the successor to Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft re ...

hardware-accelerated rendering support ** Custom native mouse cursors ** Multiple monitor fullscreen support ** Enhanced

subpixel rendering Subpixel rendering is a method used to increase the effective resolution of a color display device. It utilizes the composition of each pixel, which consists of three subpixels of which are red, green, and blue that can each be individually ad ...

for text * Adobe Flash Player 10.2 (version 10.2.152.32) (February 28, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.2 (version 10.2.153.1) (March 21, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.2 (version 10.2.159.1) (April 15, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.181.14, codenamed ''

Wasabi Wasabi (Japanese language, Japanese: , , or , ) or Japanese horseradish (''Eutrema japonicum'' syn. ''Wasabia japonica'') is a plant of the family Brassicaceae, which also includes horseradish and Mustard plant, mustard in other genus, genera. ...

'') (May 12, 2011) ** Media measurement (video analytics for websites; desktop only) ** Acoustic Echo Cancellation (acoustic echo cancellation, noise suppression, voice activity detection, automatic compensation for microphone input levels; desktop only) ** Integration with browser privacy controls for managing local storage (ClearSiteData NPAPI) ** Native control panel ** Auto-update notification for Mac OS X ** Last version for Mac OS X 10.5 and Windows 2000 (unofficially bypassing the XP installer) ** Adobe replaced Extended Support Release 10.3 by 11.7 on July 9, 2013. * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.181.23) (June 5, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.181.26) (June 14, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.181.34) (June 29, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.183.5) (August 14, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.183.7) (August 24, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.183.10) (September 21, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.183.11) (November 11, 2011) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.183.25) (September 18, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 10.3 (version 10.3.183.29) (October 8, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11 (version 11.0.1.152, codenamed '' Serrano'') (October 4, 2011) ** ''Desktop only'' *** Stage 3D accelerated graphics rendering **** Desktop: Windows (

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

9), OS X ( Intel processor only) and Linux (

1.3), SwiftShader fallback **** Mobile: Android and iOS (

OpenGL ES OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerate ...

2) *** H.264/AVC software encoding for cameras *** Native 64-bit *** Asynchronous bitmap decoding *** TLS secure sockets ** ''Desktop and mobile'' *** Stage Video hardware acceleration *** Native extension libraries **** Desktop: Windows (.dll), OS X (.framework) **** Mobile: Android (.jar, .so), iOS (.a) ***

JPEG XR JPEG XR (JPEG extended range) is an image compression standard for continuous tone photographic images, based on the HD Photo (formerly Windows Media Photo) specifications that Microsoft originally developed and patented. It supports both los ...

decoding ***

G.711 G.711 is a narrowband audio codec originally designed for use in telephony that provides toll-quality audio at 64 kbit/s. It is an ITU-T standard (Recommendation) for audio encoding, titled Pulse code modulation (PCM) of voice frequencies ...

audio compression for telephony *** Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) *** Unlimited bitmap size ***

LZMA The Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) is an algorithm used to perform lossless data compression. It has been used in the 7z format of the 7-Zip archiver since 2001. This algorithm uses a dictionary compression scheme somewhat similar ...

SWF compression ** ''Mobile only'' *** H.264/AAC playback *** Front-facing camera *** Background audio playback *** Device speaker control *** 16- and 32-bit color depth * Adobe Flash Player 11.1 (version 11.1.102.55, codenamed '' Anza'') (November 10, 2011) ** Last version of the web browser plug-in for mobile devices (made for Android 2.2 to 4.0.3) ** iOS 5 native extensions for AIR ** StageText: Native text input UI for Android ** Security enhancements, last official version for Windows 2000 * Adobe Flash Player 11.1 (version 11.1.102.62) (March 5, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.2 (version 11.2.202.228) (March 28, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.2 (version 11.2.202.233) (April 12, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.2 (version 11.2.202.235, codenamed ''Brannan'') (May 3, 2012) ** The Windows version offers automatic updater options ** Dropped support of the browser plug-in for mobile devices (Android). Android app developers are encouraged to use Adobe Air and Android web developers should switch to HTML5. ** Extended support for Flash player 11.2 on Solaris as it is the last version to be supported. ** Adobe replaced Extended Support Release 11.2 on Linux with 24.0 on December 13, 2016. * Adobe Flash Player 11.3 (version 11.3.300.257) (June 8, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.3 (version 11.3.300.262) (June 21, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.3 (version 11.3.300.265) (July 11, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.3 (version 11.3.300.268) (July 26, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.3 (version 11.3.300.270) (August 4, 2012) ** ''Desktop and mobile'' *** Fullscreen interactive mode (keyboard input during fullscreen) *** Native bitmap encoding and compression (PNG, JPEG, JPEG-XR) *** Draw bitmaps with quality (low, medium, high, best) *** Texture streaming for Stage3D *** Dropped support for Linux and Solaris ** ''Mobile-only'' *** Auto-orientation on specific devices *** USB debugging for AIR on iOS * Adobe Flash Player 11.3 (version 11.3.300.271) (September 18, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.3 (version 11.3.300.273) (October 3, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.4 (version 11.4.402.259) (August 10, 2012) ** ''Flash Player only'' *** ActionScript workers *** SandboxBridge support *** Licensing support: Flash Player Premium features for gaming ** ''Flash Player and AIR'' *** Stage3D "constrained" profile for increased GPU reach ***

support for ByteArray *** StageVideo attachCamera/Camera improvements *** Compressed texture with alpha support for Stage3D *** DXT encoding ** ''AIR only'' *** Deprecated Carbon APIs for AIR *** Direct AIR deployment using ADT *** Push notifications for iOS *** Ambient AudioPlaybackMode *** Exception support in Native Extensions for iOS * Adobe Flash Player 11.4 (version 11.4.402.265) (August 21, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.4 (version 11.4.402.278) (September 18, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.4 (version 11.4.402.287) (October 8, 2012) * Adobe Flash Player 11.5 ** Shared ByteArray ** Invoke Event enhancement (for openurl) ** Packaging multiple libraries in an ANE (iOS) ** Debug stack trace in release builds of Flash Player ** Statically link DRM (desktop only) * Adobe Flash Player 11.6 (codenamed ''

Folsom Folsom may refer to: People * Folsom (surname) Places in the United States * Folsom, Perry County, Alabama * Folsom, Randolph County, Alabama * Folsom, California * Folsom, Georgia * Folsom, Louisiana * Folsom, Missouri * Folsom, New Jers ...

'') ** Lossless video export from standalone and authplay.dll ** Support for flash.display.graphics.readGraphicsData() that returns a Vector of IGraphicsData ** Improve permissions UI related to full screen keyboard access ** Prevent ActiveX abuse in Office documents ** Support file access in cloud on Windows ** Enhance multi-SWF support ** Migration certification for ANEs ** RectangleTexture ** File API update so AIR apps conform to Apple data storage guidelines ** Separate sampler state for Stage3D ** Set device specific Retina Display resolution (iOS) * Adobe Flash Player 11.7 (version 11.7.700.169, codenamed '' Geary'') (April 9, 2013) ** SharedObject.preventBackup property ** forceCPURenderModeForDevices ** Remote hosting of SWF files in case of multiple SWFs ** Support for uploading 16-bit texture formats ** GameInput updates ** Android – create captive runtime apps ** Adobe replaced Extended Support Release 11.7 on Mac and Windows with 13.0 on May 13, 2014. * Adobe Flash Player 11.8 (codenamed ''Harrison'') ** Stage3D baselineExtended profile ** Recursive stop on MovieClip ** Flash Player & AIR Desktop Game Pad Support ** Support for large textures (extendedBaseline, 4096) ** Rectangle texture ** DatagramSocket ** ServerSocket ** Substitute a redirected URL from a source URLRequest for part of the URL in a new URLRequest * Adobe Flash Player 11.9 (codenamed ''Irving'') **

OS X Mavericks OS X Mavericks (version 10.9) is the 10th major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mavericks was announced on June 10, 2013, at WWDC 2013, and was released on October 22, 2013, wo ...

Support ** Mac .pkg Installation Support * Adobe Flash Player 12 (codenamed ''Jones'') (November 14, 2013) ** Improved Mac .pkg Installation Support for the work flow and UI ** Support for

on Windows 7 ** Support for Safe Mode in

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

6.1 and higher ** 64-bit PPAPI Flash Player for

** Graphics: Buffer Usage flag for Stage3D * Adobe Flash Player 13 (codenamed ''King'') ** Supplementary Characters Enhancement Support for Text Field ** Full Screen video message tweak ** this is the ''Extended Support Release''. * Adobe Flash Player 14 (version 14.0.0.125, codenamed '' Lombard'') (June 10, 2014) ** Stage 3D Standard profile * Adobe Flash Player 14 (version 14.0.0.145) (July 8, 2014) * Adobe Flash Player 14 (version 14.0.0.179) (August 12, 2014) * Adobe Flash Player 15 (version 15.0.0.152, codenamed ''

Market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market *Marketing, the act of sat ...

'') (September 9, 2014) ** Improved support for browser zoom levels * Adobe Flash Player 15 (version 15.0.0.167) (September 23, 2014) * Adobe Flash Player 15 (version 15.0.0.223) (November 11, 2014) * Adobe Flash Player 16 (version 16.0.0.235, codenamed ''Natoma'') (December 9, 2014) ** Stage3D – Standard Constrained Profile ** PPAPI Installers for Windows and Mac * Adobe Flash Player 16 (version 16.0.0.257) (January 13, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 16 (version 16.0.0.287) (January 22, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 16 (version 16.0.0.296) (January 27, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 16 (version 16.0.0.305) (February 5, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 17 (version 17.0.0.134, codenamed '' Octavia'') (March 12, 2015) ** Control Panel improvements ** Installer improvements for Mac * Adobe Flash Player 17 (version 17.0.0.169) (April 14, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 17 (version 17.0.0.188) (May 12, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 18 (version 18.0.0.160, codenamed ''

Presidio A presidio (''jail, fortification'') was a fortified base established by the Spanish Empire mainly between the 16th and 18th centuries in areas under their control or influence. The term is derived from the Latin word ''praesidium'' meaning ''pr ...

'') (June 9, 2015) ** Contains fixes for Adobe Security Bulletin APSB 15–11 * Adobe Flash Player 18 (version 18.0.0.194) (June 23, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 18 (version 18.0.0.203) (July 8, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 18 (version 18.0.0.209) (July 14, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 18 (version 18.0.0.232) (August 11, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 19 (version 19.0.0.185, codenamed ''Quint'') (September 21, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 19 (version 19.0.0.207) (October 13, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 19 (version 19.0.0.226) (October 16, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 19 (version 19.0.0.245) (November 10, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 20 (version 20.0.0.228, codenamed ''Rankin'') (December 8, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 20 (version 20.0.0.267) (December 28, 2015) * Adobe Flash Player 20 (version 20.0.0.270) (January 1, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 20 (version 20.0.0.286) (January 19, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 20 (version 20.0.0.306) (February 9, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 21 (version 21.0.0.182, codenamed ''Sutter'') (March 10, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 21 (version 21.0.0.197) (March 23, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 21 (version 21.0.0.213) (April 7, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 21 (version 21.0.0.216) (April 8, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 21 (version 21.0.0.226) (April 21, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 21 (version 21.0.0.242) (May 12, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 22 (version 22.0.0.185, codenamed ''Townsend'') (June 16, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 22 (version 22.0.0.209) (July 12, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 22 (version 22.0.0.210) (July 14, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 23 (version 23.0.0.162, codenamed ''Underwood'') (September 13, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 23 (version 23.0.0.185) (October 11, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 23 (version 23.0.0.205) (October 26, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 23 (version 23.0.0.207) (November 8, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 24 (version 24.0.0.186, codenamed '' Van Ness'') (December 13, 2016) * Adobe Flash Player 24 (version 24.0.0.194) (January 10, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 24 (version 24.0.0.221) (February 14, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 25 (version 25.0.0.127, codenamed ''Webster'') (March 14, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 25 (version 25.0.0.148) (April 11, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 25 (version 25.0.0.163) (April 20, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 25 (version 25.0.0.171) (May 9, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 26 (version 26.0.0.126, codenamed ''York'') (June 13, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 26 (version 26.0.0.131) (June 16, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 26 (version 26.0.0.137) (July 11, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 26 (version 26.0.0.151) (August 8, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 27 (version 27.0.0.130, codenamed ''Zoe'') (September 12, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 27 (version 27.0.0.159) (October 10, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 27 (version 27.0.0.170) (October 16, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 27 (version 27.0.0.183) (October 25, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 27 (version 27.0.0.187) (November 14, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 28 (version 28.0.0.126, codenamed ''Atka'') (December 12, 2017) * Adobe Flash Player 28 (version 28.0.0.137) (January 9, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 28 (version 28.0.0.161) (February 6, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 29 (version 29.0.0.113) (March 13, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 29 (version 29.0.0.140) (April 10, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 29 (version 29.0.0.171) (May 8, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 30 (version 30.0.0.113) (June 7, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 30 (version 30.0.0.134) (July 10, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 30 (version 30.0.0.154) (August 14, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 31 (version 31.0.0.108) (September 11, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 31 (version 31.0.0.122) (October 9, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 31 (version 31.0.0.148) (November 13, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.101) (December 5, 2018) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.114) (January 8, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.142) (February 12, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.156) (March 12, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.171) (April 9, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.192) (May 14, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.207) (June 11, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.223) (July 9, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.238) (August 13, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.255) (September 10, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.270) (October 9, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.293) (November 12, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.303) (December 10, 2019) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.314) (January 14, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.321) (January 21, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.330) (February 11, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.344) (March 10, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.363) (April 14, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.371) (May 12, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.387) (June 9, 2020) ** Refuses to play Flash content after January 12, 2021, and instead displays a static warning message. * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.403) (July 14, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.414) (August 11, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.433) (September 8, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.445) (October 13, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.453) (November 10, 2020) * Adobe Flash Player 32 (version 32.0.0.465) (December 8, 2020) ** Final global variant update.

Notes

References

External links

* * *
Flash Tester
(explains official old working version check) {{Adobe Systems Adobe Flash 1996 software

Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is a discontinuedExcept in China, where it continues to be used, as well as Harman for enterprise users. computer program for viewing multimedia c ...

Classic Mac OS media players Computer-related introductions in 1996 IRIX software Linux media players MacOS media players

Obsolete technologies OS/2 software Proprietary cross-platform software Solaris media players Windows components Windows media players

Freeware Products and services discontinued in 2020

Features

Data formats

Multimedia formats

Streaming protocols

Performance

Hardware acceleration

Compilation

Development methods

Development tools

Game development

Availability

Desktop platforms

Mobile platforms

Other hardware

End of life

Web browsers

= Google Chrome

= Mozilla Firefox

= Microsoft Windows

= Apple Safari

Fallout

Post-EOL support

= Mainland China

= Enterprise

= Web browsers

= Adobe Flash Player Projector

= Content preservation projects

Open source

Criticism

Accessibility and usability

Privacy

Security

Vendor lock-in

Apple controversy

Mainland China–specific variant

Release history

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links