Microsoft: Flash in Browser will be removed end of 2020!

[German]Microsoft plans to remove Adobe Flash from all Windows browsers by the end of 2020. The company has just announced this, and has rejected a suspicion that Flash will soon be removed.

Microsoft and Flash

Microsoft has integrated the Adobe Flash Player in Windows 8.1 as well as in Windows 10.

Flash in Microsoft browsers under Windows

The Flash Player can be used in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer browsers. Users cannot uninstall Adobe Flash Player to get rid of this security risk. But Microsoft provides security updates for Flash Player in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10..

Flash will reach end of life in 2020

At the end of July 2017, Adobe had announced that it was planning the end-of-life for Flash together with Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. At the end of 2020, the Flash update will end and the Adobe Flash Player will no longer be available for download. At that time it was said: Publishers who still rely on Flash should use the time to convert the content to new formats such as HTML5. I had outlined this topic within my blog post Fake News: Flash is dead? Now it's fading out is planned 2020.

Rumor: Flash doesn't get security updates anymore

A week ago, there was a rumor that Microsoft would no longer provide security updates for Flash on Windows 10. They will also 'soon' remove Flash Player from Windows 10. This rumor was based on information in a Microsoft support chat received by a German blog reader. I collected the details in the blog post Windows 10: Is Microsoft removing Flash support? However, I was skeptical that Microsoft would take the step of killing Flash before the end of 2020.

Flash will be retired at the end of 2020

A few hours ago, the Microsoft Edge Team published the article Update on removing Flash from Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer (August 30, 2019) within the Windows Blog. The background is that Google's Chromium Engine is entering the Edge browser. Little has changed in the timetable for the gradual burial of Flash.

• In the next version of Microsoft Edge (based on Chromium), Microsoft will disable the execution of Flash (in unison with other Chromium-based browsers). However, a user can reactivate Flash for individual websites.
• Flash will be completely removed from the browser by the end of 2020. The complete 2017 schedule can be read here.

Administrators in Enterprise environments can use Group Policy to change Flash behavior before that date. Both the version of Microsoft Edge (based on EdgeHTML) and the version for Internet Explorer 11 will continue to use Flash in 2019 unchanged. Microsoft plans to completely remove Flash from all browsers by December 2020.

Similar articles:
Fake News: Flash is dead? Now it's fading out is planned 2020
Windows 10: Is Microsoft removing Flash support?