Uninstalling Adobe Flash Player on Mac differs from standard methods of application removal. You will not find Adobe Flash Player in the Launchpad or in the Applications folder. You can see it in the System Preferences Panes only. The official Adobe Flash Player website provides the removal instruction using its installer file. However many users can’t find this file on their systems. In this article, we will explain several methods on how to successfully uninstall Flash Player from your Mac.
Contents:
- What is Adobe Flash Player
- How to uninstall Flash Player using its install manager
- How to manually uninstall Adobe Flash Player on Mac
- How to easily uninstall Adobe Flash Player on Mac
What is Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Flash Player was a popular Internet plugin used by web browsers and allowed to watch videos, listen to audio files, or play online games. However, Microsoft announced that by January 2021 it is ending the support of this plug-in. This is one of the reasons why you might need to uninstall Flash Player from your machine. Keep reading to learn how to do this.
How to uninstall Flash Player using its install manager
The official Flash Player removal guide states that this method uninstalls the plugin completely. We will follow the recommended steps and then check the system for the software’s leftovers.
Here are the steps to remove Flash Player using the installer file:
- Go to Applications Folder → Utilities.
- Find and run Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.
- You will see a pop-up window. Click the Uninstall button.
- In a few seconds, you will see the message that the program had been removed from your computer.
Now let’s check the system for the program’s leftovers. For this, we used a free utility from Nektony – Funter which finds all hidden files on a Mac just by the file name. We searched the “flash” word and found the program’s cache files in the Library folder.
Thus, the official instruction does not remove Flash Player from Mac completely. You should then manually find all remaining files of Flash Player and remove them for a complete uninstallation. You can find these files with Funter.
How to manually uninstall Adobe Flash Player on Mac
If for some reason you can’t find the Flash Player Install Manager in your Utilities folder, you can use the manual method of removing the plugin.
Here are the steps to manually remove Flash Player from your Mac:
- Open System PSettings.
- Scroll down and you will find the Flash Player icon in the list of Preference Panes. Right-click on the icon and select Remove ”Flash Player.”
- Then you need to find the PreferencesPanes system folder on your Mac. For this, open Finder, press Command+Shift+G shortcut, navigate the following directory in the search field:
~/Library/Caches
- Find and remove the subfolder with Flash Player caches:
com.adobe.flashplayer.installmanager
Check also the following folders for Flash Player leftovers:
- ~/Library/PreferencePanes
- ~/Library/Application Support
- ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins
- ~/Library/Launch Daemons
Please be careful and make sure that you are deleting the correct files. Removal of important Apple system files may damage your system. Also, we recommend that you learn in the next section the fastest and safest way to uninstall Flash Player and any other software on a Mac.
Uninstall Flash Player on Mac using App Cleaner & Uninstaller
App Cleaner & Uninstaller is a special program that completely removes any type Mac applications. It automatically finds support files of the apps and removes them safely.
Follow these steps to easily uninstall Adobe Flash Player:
- Launch App Cleaner & Uninstaller. It will scan your applications.
- Turn on the Expert Mode
- Select Adobe Flash Player from the list of apps. In the right section of the app, you can see all the service files of the program.
- Click the Remove button and confirm the uninstallation of Adobe Flash Player.
That’s all! You can try App Cleaner & Uninstaller for free.
Video Guide: How to uninstall apps on a Mac
