Ugh. Flash. The technology that just about everyone hates and that still just won’t die. While Flash is in its last throes out now that YouTube, Twitch and Mozilla’s Firefox browser have moved away from it, plenty of other websites still use it to deliver both video and games, among other things. Now a new movement called Occupy Flash has started up to get web users to give Flash one final big push over the cliff by uninstalling it on their computer or disabling it in their browsers.
FLASHBACK: Steve Jobs first started trashing Flash back in 2010
To help people get rid of Flash on their devices, Occupy Flash has helpfully posted links to instructions for removing Flash from different platforms. Below we’ve written up a quick summary.
Uninstall Flash on Windows:
- Download and install the Windows Flash uninstaller from Adobe here.
- Close down all browsers and any other programs that use Flash.
- Open up the uninstaller program and just click “Uninstall” and it should do all the work for you.
- To check if the uninstall was success, click on the Start menu and click Run. Then paste C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash into the query box. If the installation was successful, there will be no folders found. If there are still folders lurking about, you can delete them manually.
Uninstall Flash on Mac:
- If you’re running OS X 10.6 or later, you’ll want to use this uninstaller. If you’re running OS X 10.4 or 10.5, you’ll want to use this uninstaller. For OS 10.3 and earlier, use this uninstaller.
- In the Safari browser, select Window > Downloads. Open the uninstaller by double clicking it.
- Close all your browsers and then click Uninstall to remove Flash.
- You may also want to delete the following directories after uninstalling Flash: “<home directory>/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player” and “<home directory>/Library/Caches/Adobe/Flash\ Player”
Disabling Flash from Google Chrome browser:
- In your browser’s address bar, type in chrome:plugins.
- Locate Flash and click “disable.”
And that’s it! Flash will hopefully be gone from your computer and websites that are still using it (we’re looking at you, Google Analytics!) will hopefully get the hint that it’s time to move on to a new technology.
