Removing Flash from your Mac
Back in October, Apple shipped its first MacBook Air models without the Adobe Flash plug-in pre-installed. In the ensuing brouhaha, Ars Technica discovered Flash cut battery life by up to 33 percent on the MacBook Air and possibly other MacBook models. Personally, my MacBook often sounds like it's preparing for space flight when I visit pages that use Adobe's plug-in.
Whether you wish to conserve electricity, silence overactive cooling fans, boost the security of your browsing experience or protest against the use of media plug-ins, you can easily remove Adobe Flash from your Mac. Most often, the Flash plug-in can be found in the "Internet Plug-Ins" folder on your system's hard drive. To get there, switch to the Finder and select "Go to Folder..." from the "Go" menu. When prompted, enter "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/" and click "Go" to switch to the appropriate location on your system.
Once you are in the "Internet Plug-Ins" directory, make a new folder called "Disabled Plug-Ins." Move the "Flash Player.plugin," "flashplayer.xpt" and "NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave" files into your new "Disabled Plug-Ins" folder. Or if you really want to kill Flash, toss these files into the Trash. (Note: if you don't find these three files in "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/" they may be hiding in "~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/".) The next time you relaunch Safari or Firefox, Flash will no longer be enabled.
If you need to view a Flash-enabled page in a pinch, you can install and launch Chrome. This Safari-alternative ships with a Flash plug-in embedded in the browser. You can also install OmniWeb or iCab and copy the Flash plug-in into the browser's plug-in folder. For OmniWeb, right-click on the OmniWeb application and choose "Show Package Contents" to reveal the PlugIns folder. Copy the Flash plug-in to the folder, and you should be good to go. iCab does not contain a PlugIns folder, but you can create one yourself and copy over the Flash plug-in manually.
Of course, you may still wish to use websites that deliver useful content exclusively through Adobe's plug-in. If so, you could give Flash a reprieve and rely on a plug-in called ClickToFlash (or a similarly named Safari extension) that bottles Flash content until you ask for it. Unfortunately, ClickToFlash accomplishes its Flash-blocking magic by masquerading as Flash itself, preventing websites from automatically sending alternative, standards-based content. While ClickToFlash offers some useful benefits, you may still find Flash Player running wild in the background after selectively enabling it on a page.
If simply blocking Flash falls short of satisfaction, go ahead and remove the plug-in from your system using the instructions above. Then, download Google Chrome or any browser with its own encapsulated version of the Flash Player. According to Mac OS X Hints, it may be possible to configure OmniWeb or iCab with browser-specific (rather than system-wide) copies of the Flash Player. When you encounter a website with Flash content you want to see, open it in the browser you've dedicated to Flash and enjoy. When you're done viewing the content, you can quit the browser and its local copy of Flash will quit, too; Flash will not continue to run in the background, drain your battery or expose your primary browser to the plug-in's additional security flaws.
Give it a try and see how it goes. In the worst case, you can always download and install a fresh, up-to-date copy of Flash Player for free from Adobe's website. In the best case, you'll find that most of the pages you enjoy don't actually rely on Flash, and you'll save some electricity or keep the fans in your Mac from going wild. If you have any additional tips, words of wisdom or Flash-blocking anecdotes, please share them in the comments.
[Thanks for the additional tips, John Gruber]
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Back in October, Apple shipped its first MacBook Air models without the Adobe Flash plug-in pre-installed. In the ensuing brouhaha, Ars...
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Flash is like a knife... it depends on you if it's used for good or bad.
My computer fans spin like crazy whenever I watch high quality video in the browser, or some complex animation, no matter if it's in Flash or HTML5 and Javascript.
The biggest problem with Flash is that it created a trend of heavy website intros and media-rich advertisement within web pages.
Flash can be used efficiently though, for high quality vector graphics (not all browsers support SVG), custom fonts in webpages (without using images or having to load entire fonts), low bandwidth vector animations, and media applications with features like audio/video chat, live streaming etc. (features that can't be achieved yet with HTML5 or other technologies)
As a bonus, it offers developers a layer of protection of the source code (well, at least it's not as easy as "View Page Source").
Quite a lof of really good websites are using Flash, and I would consider stupid to abandon the option of viewing them.
Click-to-Flash or other alternatives who enable viewing Flash on demand, is the best option for me.
"You'll save some electricity or keep the fans in your Mac from going wild."
Unless you visit a site that uses HTML5.
Dear author: please post an article on blocking HTML5 content so that I can save electricity and CPU power.
For example: when watching this stunningly beautiful HTML5 website: http://daftpunk.themaninblue.com/ my macbook fans start spinning like crazy.
I hope this reminds both readers and the author of this article that CPU-hogging can be done with any technology.
If you hear your fan kick in, you probably have an old version of Flash. The fan issue has not been a problem for me since Flash 10.1 unless you are running on non intel machine.
Check which version you have installed, that will fix the problem.
For the most part. As I mentioned further up, my Mac at home and my work pc are both up to date on everything, browser+OS+Flash, but there are some occasional ads here on TUAW and Engadget (the 2 sites I've noticed the most and consistently) the last few weeks that bring either machine to a crawl and I have to keep refreshing the page until a different ad comes up and I watch the CPU's drop and the fan will be off within the minute. The ads are from either AT&T or Sprint. The ads look very similar in design, probably the same ad agency for both companies.
I remember about 1-2 yrs ago it was AT&T ads here on TUAW that were far worse than any other Flash ad out there. Maybe AT&T's ad company wants to cripple and slow down my computing experience to mimic their mobile data service in my area?
I find it hilarious all the corporations who will nickel & dime you for every farthering of a penny just randomly turn over their website to adobe for a FREE GIANT AD that reads - go to www.adobe.com to download the flash player and that adobe NEVER sends you back - hilarious ... like Viacom Comedy Central suing YouTube for 'promoting' their products yet they happily turn over EVERY page with a video to Adobe for a FREE AD to load an add-on to play more ads. If adobe is payng you millions like MS to Nokia to use their OS, I understand that but to randomly allow Adobe to hijack your site and DRIVE away your customers? Idiots. Yea, if I run across a video that won't load, I just move on. There is ALWAYS someone serving that video in HTML-MP4. But it takes a while to get rid of the old internet just like there are still flashing GIF pages on MS gray or Real Videos ...
May 12 2011 at 9:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySome top right corner ads right here on TUAW have been dragging my Mac & work pc to a crawl, fans going crazy and can barely navigate page until I keep refreshing until I hit an ad series that doesn't kill me. Most of them seem to be AT&T or Sprint but the ads look identical, maybe same agency? Only really been noticing this on TUAW & Engadget the last couple of weeks.
May 12 2011 at 9:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI've been using FlashFlozen from the App Store. It works really well. It allows you to toggle killing flash when it takes over a certain percentage of your CPU, of autokill it, all from the Menu Bar.
May 12 2011 at 4:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyA great way I've discovered to extend the battery life on my Mac and iPhone is to leave them switched off. Never switch them on at all ... ever. Added bonus is no annoying, buggy, processor burning HTML5 ads either!
May 12 2011 at 4:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySeriously though, Lynx is a good alternative.
It is a Text-Only browser that runs in the Terminal and uses very little CPU whatsoever. We used to use it back when the only Web Access we had was through a VT110 terminal emulator.
Not the most user friendly, but much more practical than not using your computer at all.
Regarding Click-to-Flash and flashblockers VS removing Flash.
Click-to-Flash and flashblockers tell the website that they are showing you the flash content. So flash advertisers and webmasters never know that you are not seeing their content. Thus, they have no incentive to change their behavior of delivering content using buggy, processor intensive Flash. I prefer to let them know that if they are talking Flash, I am not listening.
Or you can just click here and download the uninstaller of flash from Adobe.
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/uninstall_flash_player_osx.dmg
Even easier - download and install this uninstall tool from Adobe:
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/uninstall_flash_player_osx.dmg
from this support KB:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/865/cpsid_86551.html#ostype=m,prob1=uninst,
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TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple.
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