Adobe discontinues its Flash Player plug-in after two decades

The company in 2017 said it will discontinue its Flash Player by the end of 2020

Adobe urged users to uninstall Flash Player plug-in as it would no longer issue updates to it. AFP In this photo taken on April 16, 2020, a general view shows the Indian office of US multinational comShow more

Adobe Flash Player, a browser plug-in that helped craft animation before the smartphone era, is officially discontinued after the company stopped supporting it on December 31.

"Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems," the company said in a statement on its website.
"Some users may continue to see reminders from Adobe to uninstall Flash Player from their system."

In 2017, Adobe said it is ending Flash Player after it noted that other applications like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured to serve as an alternative to Flash.

"Also, major browser vendors are integrating these open standards into their browsers and deprecating most other plug-ins (like Flash Player)," Adobe said.

Although the company will not start blocking Flash until January 12, major browsers have started to remove it.

First launched in 1996, Flash was used to stream videos and play games online. However, the plug-in failed to adapt quickly to the smartphones, often posing security flaws that restricted its use in these devices.

While Adobe eventually developed a version that could run on mobile, the company stopped producing it in 2011.

Adobe's Flash Player had also come under heavy criticism from Apple founder Steve Jobs, who wrote a famous open letter detailing the shortcomings of Flash.