Flash support/ capability will be complete removed from Chromium. It will no
longer be possible to enable Flash Player with Enterprise policy in Chrome 88+.
HARMAN offers a number of commercial
support
options
for Flash
Player beyond 2020. These can be used in complement with Chrome's
Legacy Browser Support
(LBS)
,
allowing for both to remain secure and up to date.
It will no longer be possible to enable Flash Player, via Enterprise policy
(
AllowOutdatedPlugins
),
in versions of Chrome before Chrome 88 on Windows, Mac, and Linux. ChromeOS will
continue to allow the use of the
AllowOutdatedPlugins
policy.
We strongly encourage Enterprises to migrate away from Flash Player or explore
solutions that leverage LBS to remain on a modern, updated, and secure version
of Chrome.
HARMAN offers a number of commercial
support
options
for Flash
Player beyond 2020. These can be used in complement with Chrome's
Legacy Browser Support
(LBS)
,
allowing for both to remain secure and up to date.
Chrome pauses non-essential(1) Flash Content, by replacing the plugin content
with a static image preview and a play button overlayed. Users can re-enable
this content by clicking play.
(1) - Non-essential content being smaller than 300x400 pixels or smaller than
5x5 pixels.
Much of this content (5x5 below) was used for viewability detection (i.e. to see
if an ad was on that page), requiring Chrome to spin up a relatively expensive
(in terms of performance) Flash process in order for the site to infer
viewability.
With the introduction of Intersection Observer in Chrome 51, which added
platform support for this use case, there was no longer a need to continue
granting this exception.
We left an exception for "same origin" 5x5 Flash content, to give smaller sites
(e.g. using things like clipboard access) time to migrate.
This will allow the long tail of websites that never updated to the HTML5 embeds
to no longer require Flash for Chrome users, thus reducing overall usage of
Flash in Chrome.
Enable Chrome to rapidly distribute Flash Player updates, without re-building
the core product, making it easier to match Adobe's monthly release cadence.
This feature was fundamentally technology gated, requiring development of
in-line on-demand Flash component installs, differential component updates, and
building out special serving infrastructure.
Navigator.Plugins() and Navigator.MimeTypes() will only report the presence of
Flash Player if the user has indicated that the domain should execute Flash. If
a site offers an HTML5 experience, this change will make that the primary
experience. We will continue to ship Flash Player with Chrome, and if a site
truly requires Flash, a prompt will appear at the top of the page when the user
first visits that site, giving them the option of allowing it to run for that
site (see the
proposal
for the mock-ups).
HTML5 by default has shipped and we are currently in the process of ramping up
the SEI threshold, per the schedule below.
Currently 87.5% of population have an SEI threshold score of 4 and 12.5% has a
threshold score of 8 (we do this to measure the impact of the threshold change).
By the end of the month we will progress on to the next phase on the ramp and
everyone will be at least at 8.
HTML5 by Default was initially rolled out to 1% of Chrome 55 Stable users
(December), followed by a full deployment (i.e. to 100% of users) in Chrome 56
Stable (February).
Flash prompting will only be enabled for sites whose
Site Engagement
Index
(SEI) is below a certain
threshold. For Chrome 55, starting in January 2017 prompts will only appear for
sites where the user’s SEI is less than 1. That threshold will increase to 100
through October 2017, when all Flash sites will require an initial prompt. As a
reminder, users will only be prompted once per site.
Here’s a summary of thresholds and % of users:
Site Engagement Threshold
User % Enabled
January 2017
1 (Stable 55)
1% (Stable 55), 50% (Beta 56)
February 2017
100% (Stable 56)
March 2017
April 2017
May 2017
June 2017
July 2017
August 2017
September 2017
October 2017
Ultimately we recommend migrating towards HTML5 content, however for sites that
still require Flash Player in the interim we recommend presenting users with a
link/ image to "Enable" Flash Player that points to
"
https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
." When users click on that link Chrome
will present the necessary UI to enable Flash Player for the site. It will look
something like
this
.
We originally intended on blocking this type of content in the PPS Tiny launch,
however due to a technical oversight we unintentionally left the exception in.
This change brings the implementation in line with what we originally
communicated and intended.
The exception was meant to be a temporary relief for smaller developers, for
features that are well now very supported by the web platform (e.g. clipboard
access, audio streams, etc...).
We typically remove feature flags once a feature has launched. However, for this
case, given the impact of the change, we left the flag in for an extended period
to assist developers with debugging the change in behavior. This change will
also help remove the number of similar (but somewhat distinct) control points
for Flash Player and reduce the overall complexity of configuration, leading up
to the settings simplification in the following release.
Transition the current Flash settings to a single On/Off toggle. If On, Chrome
run consistently with HTML5 by Default (i.e. prompting users to enable Flash
Player on a per site basis), if Off Flash Player will be blocked. In effect,
this change is removing a UI option to always allow Flash Player to run without
prompting. Users will still be able to manually add wildcard exceptions, which
afford similar capabilities as always allow (albeit in a way that's less obvious
to configure).
Existing users who have set "Always Allow" and Ask (HTML5 by Default) will get
migrated to On. Chrome will not automatically create any wildcard exceptions in
the transition.
The intent is to simplify the user choice down to a single option, enable Flash
Player (default == enabled), that is easier for users to understand. Power users
will be able to add exceptions (including those with wildcards) explicitly Allow
Flash to run.
Flash will be disabled by default, but can be enabled in Settings at which point
explicit permission is still required for each site when the browser is
restarted.
Rationale
Require affirmative user choice to run Flash Player.
When users go to active Flash Player for an origin/ session we will show an
additional line of text "Flash Player will no longer be supported after December
2020." in the activation prompt. The dialog will also include a (?) icon that
links to blog post, giving additional background and context.
This change will make the deprecation timing more prominent, particularly in
settings where the Infobar on startup warning might not appear (i.e., policy
configurations that enable Flash Player).
Ensure that all non-policy enabled Flash content requires per session
activation, which coupled with the warning in the activation prompt should help
to increase awareness of the impending change in support.
