Apple has completely removed Adobe Flash support in the latest Safari Technology Preview version, with the same change projected to make its way to the stable build of the browser in the coming months.
Adobe announced the end of Flash back in 2017, and browser developers, including Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple, shared plans on how they intended to deal with the retirement of the platform.
Apple, however, has long been prepared for this moment, as the Cupertino-based tech giant originally stopped offering Flash pre-installed on Macs back in 2010. Furthermore, devices like iPhone and iPad never supported Flash in the first place, while newer installations of Adobe’s software on Apple computers required explicit user approval for each website attempting to run the plugin.
Other browser makers to follow
Safari Technology Preview version 99, however, is another major step towards the full demise of Flash, which according to Adobe is projected to happen later this year.
“As open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins,” Adobe said back in 2017.
Apple hasn’t shared any ETA specifics to let us know when Flash would be removed in production builds of Safari, but it’s now just a matter of time until this happens given support for Adobe’s software has already been pulled from the beta build.
The other browser developers are also expected to fully drop support for Adobe Flash in the coming months ahead of the planned late-2020 retirement date.
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