How to expel Flash from your Mac now Adobe says you should

Thumbs up for the welcome end of Flash. Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

It took years and years and years, but now at last Adobe has finally killed Flash. Here is how to remove from your Mac.

The death of proprietary standards

“Flash has not performed well on mobile devices,” wrote Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2010.

“We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.”

His words caused consternation, criticism and eventual vindication. It never really shone on mobile, and now its being destroyed on Macs and PCs too. Flash is no longer available in any mass market sense and even its developer now recommends you remove it.

How to remove Flash from your Mac.

One of the problems with Flash was always its existence as a parasitic platform within other platforms. It was a hassle to install, a hassle to maintain (with maintenance and easy target for malware authors to subvert) and once installed tended to eat processor cycles and more. No surprise, then, that in order to remove Flash from your Mac you need to leap through a few more hoops.

Here’s what to do. Unfortunately (but typically) it’s a bit of a convoluted process”

The uninstaller is pretty boring

The 12-steps to removing Flash

• Tap About this Mac in the Apple menu and note your current macOS version.
• You’ll then need to download the correct uninstaller:

Adobe Flash Player uninstaller for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5

Adobe Flash Player uninstaller for Mac OS X 10.6 and all macOS versions

• Once downloaded you’ll need to double click the installer to run it – Tap Uninstall once the process begins.
• Click “Done” when removal is complete.

Then, because Flash is now and has always been pretty annoying, there’s a couple more steps you must take to ensure the software has been properly deleted from your system:

• While holding down the Option key tap the Finder’s Go menu and choose Library.
• Look for the following items. Drag-&-drop them to trash if you find them. (Don’t trash your library, just the file).

/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/

/Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash Player/

• Reboot the Mac.
• Then, because the fun of Flash never ever ends you’ll need to visit this webpage and click “Check Now” to confirm uninstallation is complete.
• Finally, because the fun of Flash never ever ends, you may be directed to a page in which Adobe tells you how proud it is of Flash, which was indeed ahead of its time when Macromedia made it. Indeed, way back in 2015, Adobe’s Macromedia acquisition was driven by that firm’s desire to take control of a proprietary codec that then drove the majority of online video experiences, Flash. On reflection, this wasn’t an especially successful investment.

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