Enable Flash In Safari

By default Flash apps are not going to appear on webpages in Safari. However, it is easy to enable them by clicking on the prompt or using Safari's Preferences. In some cases, using Preferences may be the only way to get Flash working properly on a site.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: So, a lot of people dislike Flash because it is used a lot in web advertising and some websites use it unnecessarily. But a lot of websites use it for things like games. As a matter of fact that's how I got my start creating lots of flash based games for the web. 
What happens when you go to a website that's supposed to use Flash, say for a game, but it's not working. Let's take a look at three examples. These are all my websites.
Here we see a game on my website, Game Scene.com. When I go there it says Click to Use Flash. This is kind of how it should be. I don't have Flash. It doesn't load automatically. But I click and I get a box here that asks me Do I want to use Flash here every time,which is most likely yes if this is a page with a game that I play all the time, Just use it this once, or Cancel. Say I go to a site and I accidentally click that but I don't want to see the Flash. 
So I choose one of these. I can also go to Safari Preferences and then go to Security, plug in Settings, select Flash and here's where you actually disable Flash without getting rid of it completely. So if this is a kind of thing where you need to use Flash every once in a while but you want to disable it in general, you can disable it here and then reenable it when you need it. 
You can see here I've got the websites that are open in different tabs. This is the setting for Flash. So I can actually just say I want it turned on for this website all the time. Also I can give instructions for what happens when I go to a new website. One that is not listed here. I can say, you know, just ask every time, or have it off by default or on by default. 
Normally I would click here and say use every time and the page would reload. Noted that if you change that setting in Preferences you also will have to reload the page for it to take effect. 
You can see the same thing here. Here's my site Just Crosswords.com. I click to use Flash, say use every time, the page reloads and there's the Flash. 
Now sometimes it's a little tougher to get Flash for a game. Here's an example of another one of my websites. On this website it just comes up with that you need Flash to play this game and there's no way to enable Flash.  So what's happening here is when I created this site a long time ago I put some code on it to detect whether or not you had Flash. If you didn't have Flash it gives you this message so you can get it. If you do have Flash it displays everything as normal.
But if you have Flash turned off as Safari does by default it's going to show you this message and it's not really clear what to do. So in this case what you need to do is go to Preferences, go to Security, plug in Settings, find the site you're on to switch Flash to On, hit Done and then reload the page. 
When I reload it now you can see that the Flash game flows just fine. So keep that in mind. If Flash doesn't seem to be working for a game that you might want to play that you need to actually go into Preferences there and switch it On. That's where you can also really control it. You can go in and see what you've enabled and said that you want Flash to be on or off. Then you can set your Default settings. Say if you do a lot of Flash gaming you may want to have it On by default or if you work with Flash or media websites that use a lot of it then you might want to switch it On by default which basically goes back to how you were using Flash before.

Comments: 13 Responses to “Enable Flash In Safari”

Jeffrey Ostermiller

8 years ago

This is great! I've always wondered why I had the flash pop-up, and was never able to figure out how to fix the issue. Thanks!

Joan

Thanks, I did not know about this. I went to the Adobe website and downloaded it because I could not get a lot of websites but this is a much better way to get it.

Pete

I don't see those option in Safari 10.0.2 running on Yosemite?

Gary Rosenzweig

Pete: No, it wouldn't be. This is a feature of Safari in Sierra. All of my videos are always pertaining to the current version of macOS, iOS and other software.

That would explain it then :) Thanks for such a quick response.
Is that also why I can't see youtube vids all of a sudden?

Pete: Could be. Try this the next time you run into a YouTube video that isn't working.

I'll have to upgrade to Sierra first but this is a good incentive to do so

Rosemary McVicar

Is there any way to enable Adobe flash player in Yosemite? I have tried to download it several times and Safari security acknowledges Adobe FlashPlayer 24.0.0.186 is turned on but I keep getting messages that my system does not have it and it does not show up in the Applications folder. Thank you for any comments/suggestions. I have an older iMac and can't upgrade to Sierra.

Rosemary: The Adobe Flash Player is not an app that would show up in your Applications folder. It is a "plug-in" for your web browser. Have you tried testing it out here: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html

Chris Proudlove

Gary, I thought Flash was a bad thing, full of gremlins and in need of constant updates containing even more gremlins. Or have I got that wrong?

Chris: The Flash player is an extremely powerful environment that allows all sorts of apps to exist in webpages. Being so versatile, it can be used for lots of things that can't be done on the web in any other way -- like some complex games. But it can also be abused by malicious developers which is why it is often updated to prevent exploits. But it is updated no more than browsers and operating systems, which are also powerful and can be exploited as a result. The updates don't contain "gremlins" -- they fix things.
I've been using the Flash player to create website games that millions of people have safely played and enjoyed since 1999. YouTube's primary video player is Flash too, and for the first many years of YouTube Flash the only video player.

Rosemary

Thanks so much Gary. I've got it installed now. Very helpful website you passed on. Helpful info re Flash Player as well.

carmie

It worked, thanks for the instructions. I do rely on your insight for this old MAC to stay as current as possible.

Comments Closed.

Enable Flash In Safari

Comments: 13 Responses to “Enable Flash In Safari”

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