It looks like the death of Flash might be happening sooner than we thought. Apple recently announced that they would be stopping support for Adobe Flash in the newly announced macOS Sierra update.
Apple isn’t the first to make such move for its desktop browser. Just last month, Google announced that they will be slowly phasing out support for Flash for Chrome. This is to encourage websites to start using HTML5 instead of legacy plug-ins like Flash.
Like Google, Apple isn’t completely blocking out Flash like it does on iOS. Users will still be able to load Flash however, they will receive a message that “Flash isn’t installed” along with a link to download Flash. Once clicked, Safari will inform them that the plug-in is installed and offer to activate it one time, or every time the website is visited.
Flash isn’t the only one who will be ignored by Apple. The company will be phasing out support for all legacy plug-ins such as Silverlight, Java and even QuickTime. The changes will take effect in the upcoming macOS Sierra update with Safari 10 on board. Apple is recommending for developers to test out how these changes impact your website by installing a beta of macOS Sierra. Apple will release betas for Safari 10 on OS X Yosemite and OS X El Captian later this month.
