It's time to uninstall Adobe's Flash from your Mac - here's how

Apple Insider ^ | July 13, 2013 | By Shane Cole

[Swordmaker]

The recent tidal wave of critical vulnerabilities in Adobe's Flash Player has prompted many security professionals to call for the much-maligned software's demise, and we agree. AppleInsider shows you how to uninstall Flash from your Mac, and what to do if you can't live without it.

If you're running OS X 10.6 or later, download and run this Flash uninstaller. If you have OS X 10.4 or 10.5, use this uninstaller instead.

Adobe has patched more than twenty Flash vulnerabilities in the last week — some of them days after active exploits were discovered in the wild — and issued over a dozen Flash Player security advisories since the beginning of this year. Flash has become such an information security nightmare that Facebook's Chief Security Officer called on Adobe to sunset the platform as soon as possible and ask browser vendors to forcibly kill it off.

Though most exploits are targeted at Windows, Mac users are not invincible. Thankfully, Flash is easy to remove and most of your favorite sites and Web services will continue to work fine without Flash installed. YouTube, Netflix, and a host of others have either made the shift to HTML5 video or use alternative technologies, like Microsoft's Silverlight.

How to uninstall Flash from your Mac

1. Verify your OS X version by clicking the Apple icon in the upper left and selecting About This Mac.
2. For OS X 10.5 and later — Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, or Yosemite — download and run this uninstaller.
3. For OS X 10.4 and 10.5 — Tiger or Leopard — download and run this uninstaller

What to do if you need Flash

If you find yourself with absolutely no choice but to use Flash — maybe you have a Flash-based business application — the safest course of action is to install Google Chrome. Chrome includes a special version of Flash that runs inside a sandbox, with updates handled by Google.

If you can't or won't install Chrome, a good fallback is Marc Hoyois's ClickToFlash plugin for Safari. It will prevent any Flash content from running until you explicitly authorize it by clicking a placeholder in the page.

If you insist on keeping Flash installed and won't use ClickToFlash, at the very least make sure Flash can update itself automatically by enabling automatic updates in System Preferences → Flash Player. Then perhaps you should take a long, hard look at your life choices.

[Sasparilla]

Although its not Apple, whats a good media player for
Android phones?

[bubman]

Bookmark

[Swordmaker]

How to remove Adobe FLASH from your Mac and be safe from its vulnerabilities and their exploits for all time!

Just say NO to Adobe FLASH! — PING!

Smart Apple Mac Users
Don't Allow FLASH On Their Macs
Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Thanks!

[Vendome]

It’s long past time for Flash to have gone extinct.

I hate that bloated, POS, Resource Hog.

Anymore, I just don’t watch anything that is Flash.

[Swordmaker]

Although its not Apple, whats a good media player for Android phones?

I'd recommend VLC for Android.

It plays almost all video formats.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Bookmark

[Flick Lives]

I don’t mind Flash. What I do mind is Flash seems to have a new security update just about every week. Upgrading it becomes a nuscience.

[dennisw]

Flash sucks and sucks up resources. So I block it with flash block extension otherwise my computer would be unusable for the internet. I selectively allow flash for you tube and other videos. Sometimes I forget to turn it back off. So I go into task manager and stop the program. Without doing this Firefox becomes unstable...yeah I have lots of tabs open most of the time

Windows 7 computer

[dennisw]

Anymore, I just don’t watch anything that is Flash.

Then how do you watch you tube and other videos?

[MeshugeMikey]

I have Flash Professional in my MAC.

I use it for work.

[au-plainsman]

You don’t need Flash to watch You Tube since they now
support HTML 5

I uninstalled Flash today since I got tired of the incessant security updates. So far, no big loss.

[Falconspeed]

“Magnam gratiam” - Great thanks. Uninstalled. I wonder what web sites will be asking for Flash in the future? Flash helped Youtube in its early days in 2005.

[Semper911]

.

[Swordmaker]

I use it for work.

That's too bad. . . what do you need it for? And are you certain you still do? There's a lot of Flash content that's been replaced by HTML5 and other video formats lately . If so, keep up to date on all Adobe Flash updates as soon as they come out, but unfortunately, they run days, sometimes a week or so, later after exploits are in the wild for the vulnerabilities are discovered and there are LOTS of vulnerabilities in this Swiss Cheese of spaghetti coding called Adobe Flash.

[50mm]

Ping

[Swordmaker]

I don’t mind Flash. What I do mind is Flash seems to have a new security update just about every week. Upgrading it becomes a nuscience.

That's why you should mind. . . it's a spaghetti code of a mess filled with vulnerabilities and it has been for years. Seven years ago Steve Jobs would not allow it to be on iPhones for that reasons and at that time it was the way that 50% of more of crashes hit Macs. That's bad. . . It hasn't gotten any better as Adobe hung more bells and whistles on it without rebuilding the mess underlying the whole train wreck.

[zot]

Thanks for posting this.

[Swordmaker]

Then how do you watch you tube and other videos?

The majority of YouTubes have been converted over to HTML5 or Silverlight. . . only the oldest YouTube videos are still in Flash format. . . and they are being converted.