Adobe Flash Player ends officially on December 31, 2020

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Adobe published a new support page on its website this week that provides information about the upcoming end of support for the company's Adobe Flash Player product. According to the information, Adobe Flash Player support ends on December 31, 2020.

Users should have uninstalled the Adobe Flash Player software on their devices by then, and Adobe plans to display notifications to users about the upcoming end of support for the product.

Most browser vendors have started to limit Flash Player functionality in browsers already. Google Chrome for example displays information about the upcoming Flash Player support end to users who use it, and has limited how Flash Player is activated in the browser. The company made Flash use annoying in the browser to discourage its use.

All major browser makers, e.g. Google or Mozilla, plan to remove support for Adobe Flash from their web browsers in late 2020 or early 2021.

Adobe set the date for support end to December 31, 2020. The company plans to release security updates for Adobe Flash Player until that date. Browser makers like Google or Microsoft will include these updates in their web browsers (as Flash is integrated natively in these browsers).

Flash Player downloads will be removed from the Adobe website when support ends and Adobe discourages users from installing Flash Player from third-party download sites because it is no longer supported officially.

The company revealed as well that "Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL date". It is unclear how that is achieved but a possibility is that Adobe could integrate a switch in Adobe Flash Player that prevents content from being executed in 2021. It is unclear whether that decision will affect preservation projects such as the Flash Games Preservation project.

Closing Words

It looks as if it will be difficult to run Flash content after December 31, 2020 because of Adobe's announcement that Flash content won't be executed anymore by Flash Player after support ends. It is possible that older versions of Flash will continue to execute code, but these have security issues that Adobe patched in newer versions.

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