After a long reign as the king of interactive media for the web, Adobe Flash Player – usurped in recent years by open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly – is coming to an end. After over a billion downloads, on December 31, 2020, the once standard for adding rich web content will step down from its throne for good.
Adobe announced in July 2017 that they would stop distributing and updating Flash Player after December 31, 2020 (“EOL Date”). This means Adobe will no longer issue Flash Player updates or important security patches after that date. We recommend that all users uninstall Flash Player before that time to protect their devices. Users will be automatically prompted by Adobe to uninstall Flash Player on their computers later this year and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.
How to Uninstall Adobe Flash Player
If you don’t want to wait until December to remove the Flash Player from your computer, you can manually uninstall it at any time.
Uninstalling Flash Player
- Download the uninstaller for Flash Player.
- The uninstaller for Window users can be downloaded from Adobe
- For users running macOS, version 10.6 and later, you can download the uninstaller from Adobe
- For users running macOS, version 10.4 and 10.5, you can download the uninstaller from Adobe
- Exit all browsers and other programs that use Flash.
- Run the uninstaller.
- Restart your computer and verify that uninstallation is complete by visiting the check the status of Flash Player page at https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html.
Please see the manual uninstall instructions for Windows and Mac users if you have any questions or contact the IT Help Desk.
