Flash to be retired from Microsoft browsers by end of 2020

Aug 31, 2019 16:06 GMT  ·  By

Adobe will retire Flash Player by December 2020, and a long time ago, most browser developers confirmed that by that time, support for this software would be pulled from their applications as well.

Because Microsoft is now working on a new browser, the company came back to provide fresh information on how and when it plans to kill off Flash in all of its browsers, and these include the original EdgeHTML Edge version, the new Chromium-based Edge, and Internet Explorer.

Specifically, Microsoft says that the new Chromium-based Edge will align with the rest of the Chromium-based browsers, so once Google Chrome kills off support for Adobe’s platform, Microsoft Edge should do the same as well.

New Edge losing Flash support in line with Chromium

The process will take place in stages, and Flash will first be disabled from the browser and users will be required to enable it per each site. Then, Flash Player will be removed at some point next year completely.

“Group policies are available for enterprise admins and IT pros to change the Flash behavior prior to that date,” Microsoft explains.

As far as the original version of Edge is concerned, Microsoft says it wouldn’t make any changes to the current experience this year, which means that the only update regarding the demise of Flash Player would be made in 2020. The company explains the following regarding IE and original Edge version:

“For both the in-market version of Microsoft Edge (built on EdgeHTML) and Internet Explorer 11, the current experience will continue as-is through 2019. Specifically, we no longer intend to update either Microsoft Edge (built on EdgeHTML) or Internet Explorer 11 to disable Flash by default. We still plan to fully remove Flash from these browsers by December 2020, as originally communicated.”

While the timing might seem a little bit complex, the bottom line is that Microsoft will pull support for Flash from all of its browsers by the end of 2020, and these include both Edge and IE.