Last updated: February 5, 2019
A recent Amazon.com visit presented an ugly gray box that would have otherwise been Adobe Flash Player content. It is becoming more and more rare to encounter embedded elements that require Flash Player now that Adobe yanked themselves out of the game. Most major sites have replaced Flash components with HTML5. Major browsers block Flash if it is not an integral part of a page. It is great that Microsoft Edge blocks the content to protect users. But the blocked Flash content did generate some curiosity about what Amazon couldn’t somehow present with HTML5.
The Microsoft Edge web browser blocks Flash Player content by default. Flash became click-to-run in Edge upon release of the Windows 10 Creators Update in April 2017. If you use Edge on one of 330 million active Windows 10 devices each month, it may be helpful to know how to manage Flash Player in Microsoft Edge. This tutorial explains how to enable and disable Flash in Edge, and the meaning of Flash notifications you may encounter. Since Edge integrates Flash Player, you won’t ever need to install or update it. Flash updates when the web browser itself updates.
Enable and disable Adobe Flash Player
To get started, click the 1) Settings and more menu (the one with the 3 dots) to the right of the menu bar, click 2) Settings, then click 3) Advanced.
Under Advanced > Site settings, locate the Adobe Flash section. To disable Flash Player, click the toggle to turn Use Adobe Flash Player to the Off position.
If you ever need to turn Flash Player back on, make sure to reload the web page, or open the link in a new tab, to view the Flash content.
Notifications and puzzle pieces
If the glaring gray box wasn’t sufficient enough for you, Edge displays a matching puzzle piece icon in the address bar when it has blocked Adobe Flash content.
Edge also displays a written notification that it has blocked Adobe Flash content. The notification offers two choices about how you want Edge to handle such content on the site you are visiting. Click the Allow once button to load the Flash content this time only. Click the Always allow button to add the site to a whitelist. When whitelisted, a site loads the Flash content any time you visit the site without displaying the notifications.
If the notification vanishes before you have made a selection, click the puzzle piece icon in the gray box or in the address bar to relaunch it.
Remove sites from the Adobe Flash whitelist
The time may come when you want to disallow Flash on the sites you have whitelisted. To do so, open the Settings and more menu and click Settings. Under Clear browsing data, click the Choose what to clear button. Click Show more to expand it, then check the Adobe Flash permissions box. Check or uncheck the other boxes under Clear browsing data according to your preferences. Before you click the Clear button, observe that you are clearing the entire list of sites you have whitelisted.
Once cleared, the puzzle piece icon returns to the address bar for sites where Edge blocked Adobe Flash content. It is important to note that Microsoft support for Adobe Flash Player ends in 2020.
Thank you for visiting Tech Help Knowledgebase to learn how to manage Flash Player in Microsoft Edge.
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