Adobe Flash Player was the standard for web videos and interactive websites for many years. It’s not as relevant as it once was, due to being superseded by HTML 5. However, it hasn’t died out completely and you may still run across some websites that require you to have Abobe Flash installed.
In this guide, we’ll be using our Ubuntu Linux system to install and enable Adobe Flash Player on various web browsers, like Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, and Opera. Follow along with the steps below to get it enabled on your own system.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install Flash Plugin (Firefox and Chrome)
- How to install Flash Plugin (Chromium and Opera)
- How to install Flash Plugin (browsers installed via Snap)
- How to enable Adobe Flash in Mozilla Firefox
- How to enable Adobe Flash in Google Chrome, Chromium, and Opera
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Ubuntu Linux |
| Software | Adobe Flash Player |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Install Flash Plugin (Firefox, Chrome)
This set of instructions will work for Firefox and Chrome web browsers. The first step to enabling Adobe Flash Player is to install the Flash Plugin, available in Ubuntu’s official repos. Install it by opening a command line terminal on your system and executing the following apt command:
$ sudo apt install flashplugin-installer
The Flash Plugin will be installed on your system, then you can jump to the appropriate section below to enable Adobe Flash Player in a browser of your choosing.
Install Flash Plugin (Chromium, Opera)
The Chromium and Opera web browsers get a different set of instructions, as installing the Flash Plugin mentioned above won’t suffice. Instead, we’ll need to install the Pepper Flash Player, which is maintained by Google, in addition to the regular Flash Plugin. Open a terminal and execute the following commands to install them:
$ sudo apt install flashplugin-installer $ sudo apt install browser-plugin-freshplayer-pepperflash
After these packages are installed, jump to the appropriate section below to enable Adobe Flash Player in a browser of your choosing.
Install Flash Plugin (browsers installed via Snap)
If you’ve installed Firefox or Chromium via Snap package manager, you’ll need to follow different instructions as shown below.
Firefox as snap
First, create a plugins folder for Firefox:
$ mkdir ~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla/plugins
Next, head to the Flash download page (important: do this in Firefox) and download the .tar.gz file for Linux.
Extract the files from the tar archive and copy the libflashplayer.so file over to the plugins directory:
$ tar xf flash_player* $ cp libflashplayer.so ~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla/plugins
Now you can jump ahead to see how to finish enabling Adobe Flash in Firefox.
Chromium as snap
First, create a lib folder for Chromium:
$ mkdir ~/snap/chromium/current/.local/lib
Next, head to the Flash download page (important: do this in Chromium) and download the .tar.gz file for Linux.
Extract the files from the tar archive and copy the libpepflashplayer.so file over to the lib directory:
$ tar xf flash_player* $ cp libpepflashplayer.so ~/snap/chromium/current/.local/lib
Now you can jump ahead to see how to finish enabling Adobe Flash in Chromium.
Enable Adobe Flash in Firefox
Before starting, be sure to restart your browser if it’s already open. Head over to Adobe’s official website to verify that Flash Player has been installed and is working correctly. Scroll down part way and you’ll see a Flash application. Firefox won’t allow this application to play automatically, but you can click on the “Run Adobe Flash” icon to allow it to run.
After allowing Adobe Flash and refreshing the page, you should be able to view the Flash app.
Enable Adobe Flash in Chrome, Chromium, or Opera
The Chrome, Chromium, and Opera browsers all work very similarly, right down to having near identical menus (at least for what we’re accessing to enable Flash). Thus, the following instructions will work for all three browsers.
Before starting, be sure to restart your browser if it’s already open. Head over to Adobe’s official website to verify that Flash Player has been installed and is working correctly. Scroll down part way and you’ll see a Flash application. In order to view this Flash application, we’ll need to allow this site to access Adobe Flash Player.
Click the lock icon in the address bar, then go to settings.
In this settings menu, locate the Flash setting and change it to “Allow.”
You can now exit the settings menu, but you’ll have to completely close and restart your browser in order for these changes to take effect. Come back to the Adobe site, then you must click the lock icon once more and set Flash to allow.
Finally, after reloading the page, the Flash on this Adobe page is now viewable.
Conclusion
Adobe Flash has endured a slow demise, with some sites across the web still clinging to it. Web browsers have given users a lot of hoops to jump through just to view something that was once ubiquitous. Through the instructions on this page, you should now be able to view Adobe Flash on any website, whether you are running Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Chromium, or Opera. Even in other web browsers, the process is similar.
