Microsoft Edge will follow in the footsteps of Google Chrome and other chromium-based web browsers when it comes to retiring Adobe Flash.
Back in July 2017, Adobe revealed its plans to retire Adobe Flash in December 2020 at which time the company will no longer update or distribute the software. Other browser makers including Microsoft, Google and Mozilla as well as Facebook and Apple also announced their plans to stop supporting Flash in 2020.
At that time, Microsoft stated that by the end of 2020, users would no longer be able to enable Adobe Flash in either Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer in an announcement, saying:
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"By the end of 2020, we will remove the ability to run Adobe Flash in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer across all supported versions of Microsoft Windows. Users will no longer have any ability to enable or run Flash."
Chromium-based Edge
Since its initial announcement regarding Flash support, Microsoft has begun working on a new Chromium-based Edge browser and as such, the company will now follow Google's own road map for removing Adobe Flash from Chrome. Google's plan is quite similar to the one already laid out by Microsoft and the company offered more details in a recent announcement, saying:
“In the next version of Microsoft Edge (built on Chromium), we will continue to retire Flash in the same timeframe as other Chromium based browsers. You can learn more of that timeline in this blog post. Flash will initially be disabled, and the user will need to re-enable Flash on a site-by-site basis; Flash will be completely removed from the browser towards the end of 2020. Group policies are available for enterprise admins and IT pros to change the Flash behavior prior to that date.”
Classic Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 will both continue to offer full flash functionality in 2019 and Microsoft will not be making any further changes to the Flash experience on these legacy browsers until December 2020 when Flash will be entirely removed.
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