In July, Adobe announced that Flash Player would be unsupported by December 2020 due to the availability of the more modern and secure WebGL, WebAssembly and HTML5 standards. Microsoft is now confirming they are going ahead with removing Adobe Flash Player from their browsers by January 2021.
After December 2020, the standard will no longer receive security updates from Microsoft or Adobe. Downloads hosted on Microsoft’s webpages will be removed and Flash disabled by default in Microsoft’s Edge Legacy and Internet Explorer 11 browsers. In 2021, it will be removed from the new Microsoft Edge.
The company will also push out an update to its Windows operating system that blocks Adobe Flash Player as a component of Windows, however, it says that it will “continue providing security updates Adobe Flash Player and maintain OS and browser compatibility through the end of 2020”.
Users using the new Microsoft Edge can load Flash-based websites via the Internet Explorer mode feature. Internet Explorer will also “allow this”, Microsoft says.
