Google Chrome – Disable Flash

So at work we have a couple of Ubuntu 14.04 computers that are setup in kiosk mode (setup process here) that are available for the public to use.  We have them locked down so they can only access a handful of sites.  On our web site you are able to watch live stream or archive videos of meetings.  After doing some updates on the Ubuntu computers we noticed we couldn’t play those videos any more.  We were getting a flash download error message.  We currently use JWPlayer 7.x which is embedded in our site to play the videos.

When looking into the problem I found out that Google Chrome has its own type of Flash in the browser.  So even though I was updating the Flash version on the computer Chrome wasn’t using it.  This seemed to become an issue when upgrading Chrome to version 57 or newer (was happening on version 58 at the time).  The solution was to disable set Chrome so it disabled Flash or preferred HTML over Flash.  I’m not sure if it is actually disabling Flash or not, but these steps fixed the problem.

First, set Chrome to “Prefer HTML over Flash”.

  1. Open Google Chrome.
  2. In the address bar, type and enter:  chrome://flags/#prefer-html-over-flash
  3. Set the drop down option to:  Enabled
  4. Restart the browser.

Secondly, go into Chrome Settings and tell it to block all Flash content.

  1. In Google Chrome, go to Settings
  2. Scroll down and click:  Show advanced settings…
  3. Click the button:  Content settings…
  4. Scroll down the the Flash section.
  5. Click the option:  Block sites from running Flash

After doing these two things JWPlayer was able to play the videos using HTML rather than Flash.

Source (Setting “Prefer HTML over Flash):  https://www.ghacks.net


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One Comment

  1. I enjoy the efforts you have put in this, regards for all the great articles.

    August 20, 2017
    Reply

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