Adobe began to offer their Flash Player plugin for Linux a couple of months back, 4 years after abandoning the platform.
In the years since the snub the web’s reliance on and use of Flash technologies has (thankfully) dwindled.
But that doesn’t mean we live in halcyon days. Not every website, web service or web app/game has switched to using something newer or more secure. You may still need to install Adobe Flash on Ubuntu.
And here’s how.
If You Use Google Chrome You Already Have It
The Most Easiest™ way to install Flash on Ubuntu is to install Google Chrome.
Google Chrome for Linux comes pre-packaged with the very latest version of the Flash PPAPI (‘pepper’) plugin. You don’t need to tick a box, add a repo, or do anything extra to get it — it’s present, ready to use, out of the box.
Alternatives
If you use an alternative browser, be it the super-swell Vivaldi, or Mozilla Firefox, you might prefer (or need to) to install the flash plugin separately.
Previously, Ubuntu offered a package that would (to cut a long story short) download and extract the Flash player plugin from Google Chrome and pop it in to a directory where other apps could use it.
That is no longer necessary.
Install Latest Adobe Flash Player on Ubuntu 16.04 +
The first thing you need to do is enable the Canonical Partner Repository. The Canonical Partner repository offers some proprietary applications that are free to use but are not open-source.
- Open Software & Updates
- Switch to ‘Other Software‘ tab
- Click/check the ‘Canonical Partners’ repository
- Refresh your software sources when prompted.
Now you’re all set.
Search for the adobe flash plugin in Ubuntu Software (by searching for ‘adobe flash’), or turn to the Terminal to install it a bit quicker:
sudo apt install adobe-flashplugin
Once installation is complete you will need to restart any open web-browser so that they can detect the plugin.
Alongside the plugin the command above will install a small GTK app called ‘Adobe Flash Player Preferences’. Here, you can adjust, tweak and tune various settings and features of the player, including a handy button to clear local storage.
To test that the flash plugin is working as it should you can visit the adobe.com/software/flash/about page (thanks Grof!).