Adobe stops Flash Player for Android

Adobe is ending Flash Player on Android phones. The app can be installed from the Play Store until August 15, after which users can only use Flash if it was already on the device. Flash is incompatible with Android 4.1.

Adobe warns users that Flash may exhibit strange behavior after an update to Android 4.1. After August 15, Flash Player can no longer be installed from the Play Store download store. If you nevertheless want Flash Player on your Android device, you can still install an old version from the archives.

Android has had support for Adobe Flash since Android 2.2 Froyo, which came out in 2010. A year and a half after the announcement, in November 2011, Adobe already announced that it would discontinue the mobile Flash variant. The Play Store now states that Flash is not supported on ‘any version after 4.0.x’.

In Android 4.1, Chrome is the default browser on Android. Chrome does not support the Flash plugin. According to Google, Flash is no longer necessary on smartphones, as much of the content previously published in Flash, such as videos, is now also available in HTML5.

The fact that website builders have started to use Flash less is partly due to Apple’s choice not to give the iPhone and iPad Flash support. The late Apple founder Steve Jobs thought Flash was only suitable for desktops. In addition, Flash would draw too heavily on the computing power of processors and the battery of smartphones and tablets.