Adobe will stop supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020, and will actively start blocking content from running in Flash Player from January 12, 2021. As such, the company "strongly recommends" that all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems.

Adobe has been planning to sunset Flash for a few years now and arguably could have done so even sooner. The software platform started to fall out of favor in the mid-2000s and has been on a downward trajectory ever since as alternatives like HTML5 gained support. Fortunately, the Internet Archive is working to preserve some of the best Flash content so it won't be lost to Father Time. More than 2,000 pieces of Flash media have been added to the archive.

H.264/AVC Software Encoding for Cameras (desktop)

Stream high-quality video from your computer's camera with higher compression efficiency and industry standard support, enabling both immersive real-time communications such as video chat/conferencing and live video broadcasts.

JPEG-XR support

Flash Player and AIR include support for the JPEG-XR advanced image compression standard (International Standard ISO/IEC 29199-2). The computationally lightweight JPEG-XR format provides more efficient compression than JPEG, enables both lossy and lossless compression support, and adds support for alpha channel transparency.

Enhanced high resolution bitmap support

BitmapData objects are no longer limited to a maximum resolution of 16 megapixels (16,777,215 pixels), and maximum bitmap width/height is no longer limited to 8,191 pixels, enabling the development of apps that utilize very large bitmaps.

Flash Access Content Protection Support for Mobile

Flash Access content protection support is now available on mobile devices including Android powered smartphones and tablets. In addition, content protection is now supported on tablet devices powered by the BlackBerry Tablet OS. Note: Flash Access for iOS is not supported at this time.

Flash Access Content Protection Enhancements

New Flash Access content protection features include key rotation support, V3 license chaining, domain support and enhanced output protection and device filtering.

Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS)

Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) provides protection for streaming video across screens while eliminating the deployment complexity of a license server.

Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering (Player & AIR desktop + AIR for TV)

Stage 3D is an architecture for hardware accelerated graphics rendering developed that provides a set of low-level APIs that enable advanced 2D and 3D rendering capabilities across screens and devices (desktop, mobile, and TV). Using Stage 3D, app and framework developers can now access high performance GPU hardware acceleration, enabling the creation of new classes of rich, interactive experiences. Note: Stage 3D for mobile versions of Flash Player & AIR will be enabled in a future release.

NetStream.dispose()

Similar to NetStream.close() except that it also clears up the last frame held up by NetStream to be displayed on the Video object. Use this instead of NetStream.close() if the NetStream is to be re-used for other streams later. It enforces garbage collection of the video frame and related decompressor objects. The video object will display a blank frame after the use of this method.

High efficiency SWF compression support

Developers can take advantage of LZMA compression for their SWF files. LZMA compression can reduce SWF size by up to 40%, enabling users to benefit from richer experiences with shorter download times and reduced bandwidth consumption.

G.711 Audio Compression for Telephony

Support interoperability with legacy phone systems via the Flash Media Gateway (FMG) and other third-party clients (through the open RTMP protocol) without the need for transcoding.

Native JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Support

Allows ActionScript developers to take advantage of high performance native parsing and generation of JSON-formatted data.

Garbage Collection Advice

Provides smoother, more responsive user experiences by allowing developers to provide hints to optimize garbage collection scheduling.

Cubic Bezier Curves

The cubicCurveTo drawing API allows developers to easily create complex cubic Beziers without requiring custom ActionScript code.

Secure Random Number Generator

Developers can now take advantage of cryptographically secure random number generation to build more secure algorithms and protocols.

Socket Progress Events

Improve management of data transfer using the Socket class by providing a new property to determine the number of bytes remaining in the write buffer and a new event for when data is being sent to the network layer. Using these new APIs, developers can build applications such as file transfer utilities that monitor socket progress and provide responsive feedback.

What's New

In today's scheduled release, we've updated Flash Player with important bug and security fixes.

Fixes:

  • Assorted security and functional fixes
  • Arbitrary Code Execution bug code CVE-2020-9633, classified as Critical

Previous release notes:

  • Immersive experiences with Flash video, content and applications with full-screen mode.
  • Low-bandwidth, high-quality video with advanced compression technology.
  • High-fidelity text using the advanced text rendering engine.
  • Real-time dynamic effects with filters for Blur, DropShadow, Glow, Bevel, Gradient Glow, Gradient Bevel, Displacement Map, Convolution, and Color Matrix.
  • Innovative media compositions with 8-bit video alpha channels.
  • Blend modes, radial gradient, and stroke enhancements.
  • Additional image formats: GIF, Progressive JPEG, and PNG.