Apple stops autoplaying Flash, among other things

Apple’s desktop version of Safari will block various plug-ins by default in version 10. These are Flash, Silverlight, Java and Quicktime. Safari blocks the plugins by telling websites that the plugins are not installed, even though they are.

For example, if a website does not have the ability to play the content with an HTML5 implementation, a site will display “Flash is not installed” and the user will be presented with a download link to the Adobe site. If the user then clicks on the appropriate link, Safari will indicate that the plug-in exists, but has not been activated. The user can activate the plug-in once.

In the case of a visible plug-in object, Safari provides a button with Click to use. After that, a user can activate the plug-in once or from then on every time when visiting the relevant site. Safari only retains the option to auto-load a plugin if a user visits a site regularly. After a little over a month of no visit to the site, the checked option expires again, the Webkit team writes on its blog.

The feature is already active in the beta version of macOS Sierra, but Safari 10 betas for OS X Yosemite and El Capitan are also coming. Google Chrome will also block Flash by default by the end of the year, and the browser was already blocking legacy plugins by default, as did Microsoft Edge and Firefox.