It’s a pretty well-known fact that Steve Jobs wasn’t the biggest fan of Adobe Flash. He explains his reasoning at length, and it is for these reasons that Safari doesn’t come with Flash already enabled, nor do iPhones, iPads, or iPods natively support Flash. With its ongoing and recent security issues it may be time for everyone to rethink their acceptance of Adobe Flash. For Mac owners that use Google Chrome instead of Safari as their primary browser, you can disable Flash as well.

How to disable the Flash plugin in Chrome

Google Chrome comes with Adobe Flash pre-installed since it is still used on many popular websites like YouTube. However, you can disable the plugin completely or add the option to choose when the Flash player is allowed to run. So, whatever your reason is for disabling Flash, be it the security vulnerabilities or its resource hogging tendencies, you can do so with ease.

Go to chrome://settings

1. Click on ” Show advanced settings…” to reveal the Privacy section.

2. Under the Privacy section select “Content settings…”

3. In the Content settings pop-up window click on “Let me choose when to plugin content”.

This will allow you to choose when Flash videos and other items will play within your browser. This is especially useful for those annoying sites that play Flash-based video ads, disabling them until you choose to view it.

You can also select “detect and run important plugin content” for a more hands free approach to Flash moderation. Chrome will detect when Flash content is vital to a site and automatically run when necessary.

When you want to view a Flash item, just Control-click and then select “Run This Plugin”. The video or item will play or show immediately.

You can also disable Flash completely by clicking on Manage individual plugins at the Content settings window and click disable.

While many folks hoped that HTML5 would rid the world of Flash, it hasn’t. Many websites still rely heavily on Flash, so instead of completely removing it from your browser, disabling it from automatically running is the next best choice.

Let us know your thoughts on Flash and its benefits and disadvantages in the comment section.