Sometimes when you are ready to watch your favorite videos you’re greeted with an annoying error message saying, ‘Update Flash Player on your Mac’. Getting such message suddenly looks like a riddle to you if you do not know what a Flash Player is.
If you will go to a wrong website to update Flash Player, then it may install a malware on your computer. so, what is the right way to update Adobe Flash Player For your Mac safely? Well in this article we will describe what exactly is a Flash Player and how you can update it on your Mac safely.
What is a Flash Player?
Since long, Flash Player from Adobe has been the most popular Plugins used by web browsers to allow you to play Videos, Web ads and interactive animations. Gradually this Flash Player is replaced by some more secure options popular browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox comes with their inbuilt Flash Player. If we talk about the Safari browser on your Mac running on Mac OS sierra, Apple want you to run the new and the safest way of browsing that is why it wants you to run on HTML5 therefore Safari disables Flash Player by default.
But the fact is you still need Flash Player on your Mac. The reason is some websites do not support HTML5 and still rely on the Flash Player. Many websites work on HTML5, but they will not work if you will completely uninstall Adobe Flash Player. So, you still need to install Flash Player on your Mac and if it is there you need to update it as well.
Here is how you can check if the Flash Player on your Mac really requires to be updated and can update it safely.
- Click on system preferences after going to apple menu.
- Choose Flash Player from the bottom left corner.
- Open updates tab and click on Check Now Option given at the bottom left.
- It may take a minute or so to check if the Flash Player on your computer requires an update. You will get a message “Adobe Flash Player is up to date on this system” if the Flash Player on your computer does not requires an update.
This is how you came to know that Flash Player on your computer does not requires and update. Still if you see the message that Adobe Flash Player requires and update then it would be taking you to a fake website to download a malware.
If the Flash Player on your Mac requires an update, then here is how to update Flash Player on your Mac safely.
- Go to the website https://get.Adobe.com/flashplayer/
- Carefully check before you click on download button because sometimes the install button is not for the Flash Player, but it is for the installation of McAfee antivirus.
- This will download Flash Player on your Mac. If you are using any browser other than Safari, then it will ask you for a location to save the file.
- If you are using Safari, then file will be saved to the default download folder.
- Double click on the downloaded file to install Flash update on your Mac. It will ask you to go to the webpage to read terms and conditions, but you can straightway go for the installation.
- In the next step it may ask you to enter the username and password for the Mac. Enter your credentials and proceed further for the installation.
- Once the installation is complete click on Done. It is also recommended to restart browser to get it functioned properly.
The biggest issue that most Mac users face when they try to update the Flash Player is they end up with installing a fake program. This fake program is usually a PUP (Potentially unwanted program), or sometimes a malware. But by using the above method you can safely update Flash Player for your Mac.