2 min Applications

Adobe releases last update for Flash Player before going EOL

Adobe releases last update for Flash Player before going EOL

Adobe urges users to uninstall the app before it reaches End of Life.

Adobe has issued the very last update for its iconic Flash Player app this week. The update came with a stern admonishment to users to uninstall the app before it reaches its End Of Life (EOL) on 31 December 2020.

In addition, Adobe will block all Flash content from running starting 12 January 2021.

The company is trying its best not to leave users in the lurch, however. Adobe has even posted a special “Adobe Flash Player EOL General Information Page” to help users uninstall the app.

“Some users may continue to see reminders from Adobe to uninstall Flash Player from their system,” Adobe has said.

The disappearance of Flash is not expected to have any substantive impact on the web environment. Indeed, according to survey site W3Techs, only 2.3% of today’s websites utilize Flash code. This marks a steep decline from the 28.5% market share the app had in 2011.

An exit three years in the making

The end of the road for Flash is not exactly a surprise. In 2017 Adobe announced Flash’s EOL together with all major browser makers, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla,

Since the Flash End Of Life announcement, Facebook has asked game makers to migrate to HTML5 and JavaScript-based technologies. In addition, browser vendors have disabled Flash in their respective browsers. They are also scheduled to remove the actual code that supports Flash from their codebases prior or after the EOL.

In its release notes for Flash, Adobe thanked its user and developer base.

“Today marks the final scheduled release of Flash Player for all regions outside of Mainland China. We want to take a moment to thank all of our customers and developers who have used and created amazing Flash Player content over the last two decades.”