# How can I disable the Flash player? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 2, 2005, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400 "2005-04-02T14:26:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![the\_first\_supraliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@the\_first\_supraliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_first_supraliminal)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2005, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/1 "2005-04-02T14:26:18Z")
The best advice I’ve found so far was > [@](#): > > Disable Macromedia Flash plug in > By Super Admin | Published 02/24/2005 | Internet | Rating: > > Disable Macromedia Flash plug in > The Flash player is necessary for many of those pop-up ads and graphics on > the internet, particularly on many of Yahoo!'s webpages. To prevent these > annoyances from appearing, do the following: > > 1. Ensure Internet Explorer is closed. > > 2. Determine your path to the flash plug-in (the plug-in will be a file > whose name contains the word ‘flash’, and the extension .ocx) For most > installations, it will be C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\swflash.ocx. > > 3. Unregister the plug-in by typing the following at the Start|Run prompt: > > regsvr32 c:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\swflash.ocx /u > When you restart IE, most (if not all) of those pop-ups should cease to > bother you. > > Note: Also remember that if you disable the flash plugin you will not be > able to view any sites that primarily use flash for their site design. That worked, but only until the next new email appeared with a flash picture in it. Is there any way to get rid of them for good? (P.S. I never (n e v e r !) want any Flash pictures from any site ever.) ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2005, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/2 "2005-04-02T16:59:17Z")
[Choose your poison](http://www.google.com/search?q=disable+flash&sourceid=mozilla&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8). Keep in mind that disabling Flash means those “legitmate” web sites using Flash will not work either. Also, many annoying ad popups are not Flash. Finally, there is an easier way without having to disable Flash. Dump IE in favor of Mozzie or Firefox. You can then kill popups with ease. ---
**Author:** ![the\_first\_supraliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@the\_first\_supraliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_first_supraliminal)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/3 "2005-04-02T18:12:42Z")
Thanks for the links. Yes, as I said, and hard as it is for some people to believe, I never (n e v e r !) want any Flash pictures from any site ever. “Legitimate” Flash is just as bad as the other kind. It’s like saying there are sites with “legitimate” background music. Not on my computer there aren’t. I have disabled it completely, and the relief is inaudible. ---
**Author:** ![the\_first\_supraliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@the\_first\_supraliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_first_supraliminal)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2005, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/4 "2005-04-02T18:37:31Z")
Here’s the link that worked for me [http://www.bbshare.com/](http://www.bbshare.com/) > [@](#): > > “No! Flash” “No! Flash” is a free utility to block multimedia ads and spyware in Microsoft Internet Explorer. It resides in the system tray of user’s desktop, it enables or disables multimedia content display as the user clicks the program’s icon or menu. “No! Flash” speeds your browsing by blocking ads. it helps you surf faster, safer, easier. > > Basic features: > > Enable/Disable Flash (Macromedia Shockwave Flash Player) > Enable/Disable Script (Popup Ads, Animated Ads…) > Enable/Disable Images (GIF, JPG …) > Enable/Disable Videos > Enable/Disable Animations (GIF Animation) > Enable/Disable Background Sounds The ability to turn off GIF animations as well as all the other flashing and blinking and buzzing and gonging things is an unexpected bonus! (All those things are as much fun as small dogs growling and hanging off your pants cuffs as you work) Thanks again. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2005, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/5 "2005-04-02T18:54:31Z")
> [@the first supraliminal](#): > > Yes, as I said, and hard as it is for some people to believe, I never (n e v e r !) want any Flash pictures from any site ever. Curious. But why? ---
**Author:** ![the\_first\_supraliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@the\_first\_supraliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_first_supraliminal)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/6 "2005-04-03T07:40:33Z")
Not exactly curious or unusal. As your own search pointed out, many many people have gone to a lot of trouble to program ways to get rid of these flashing buzzing, nagging things. Now allow me to be curious about your curiosity. What flashing thing do you think I want to see, because so far there have been none, out of literally thousands viewed, that I wanted to see flash at me. ---
**Author:** ![spotmaker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spotmaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spotmaker)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/7 "2005-04-03T13:04:51Z")
My company sells a fairly complicated service and uses Flash for tutorials. I suppose if you’re smart enough to disable Flash, you can probably get by without the tutorials. We’ve also considered using Flash for some of the controls and settings that are hard to make intuitive using HTML’s limited form toolkit. Actually, with all of the improvements in HTML and Javascript, we probably could get by without Flash at this point, but it’s still extremely labor intensive to build a really good UI that way. (Not that Flash is without it’s problems, for a developer, either.) BTW, Firefox has an extension called FlashGot that lets you turn off Flash movies by default, but you can click on individual movies if you want one. ---
**Author:** ![the\_first\_supraliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@the\_first\_supraliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_first_supraliminal)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/8 "2005-04-03T15:47:41Z")
> [@spotmaker](#): > > BTW, Firefox has an extension called FlashGot that lets you turn off Flash movies by default, but you can click on individual movies if you want one. This is they way all these features should ideally work. At one time (perhaps IE version 2 or 3) I had a plug-in that made all flashing gifs work only when you moused over them. They could be underlined in a color, just like active links. One recent example. Home Depot recently switched from text project tips to Flash. The tips lost all detail, as it took them too much work to show even the simplest things. Animating one paragraph on cement patching became a two minute flash, which you couldn’t skim or skip over, and the other paragraphs were simply discarded. So a good easy detailed text feature became a hard-to-control slow animated skimpy feature. Ideally, of course they could have kept both, the visual and the detailed text. Something you might consider in your own work. One man’s opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/9 "2005-04-03T16:59:02Z")
> [@the first supraliminal](#): > > Now allow me to be curious about your curiosity. What flashing thing do you think I want to see, because so far there have been none, out of literally thousands viewed, that I wanted to see flash at me. I don’t see Flash as a problem. I don’t see annoying popups that use Flash as a problem because I don’t use IE. The browsers I do use (Mozzie and Firefix) allow me controls to turn off popups but still enjoy legitimate uses of Flash on sites. Perhaps we surf in different circles. Perhaps you frequent sites that have extensive use of annoying popups while I don’t frequent such sites. ---
**Author:** ![buckgully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb9ed0/32.png) [@buckgully](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buckgully)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/10 "2005-04-03T17:52:11Z")
Flash blows for a lot of what it’s being used for. I don’t mind flash for animation sites like Home Star Runner or Strindberg & Helium, but I want to take away computer privileges from any web page designer that uses flash for basic site navigation. It says “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m making a webpage anyway.” in a way that used to only be possible with blink tags. I’m using Firefox, and have Flashblock, and I’m see this all over the place - people are now using individual flash elements for things like static menu items and rollover graphics. It’s totally inappropriate in that situation, often replacing \<1k gifs or pngs with 5-10k .swf files. Plus the overhead for loading the flash plugin for each of those. It grinds loading the page to a halt, just to have some text change color when the mouse pointer moves over it. It also doesn’t play well with screen readers, text-based browsers, and small-screen browsers (PDAs, cell phones, PSPs, etc.) and can mess up using tab to navigate. Oh, and to answer the OP: Though I don’t normally like doing this, becasue I know suggesting a totally different program for something can be very unhelpful, I personally really like [Firefox](http://mozilla.org/) with [Flashblock](http://flashblock.mozdev.org/). ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-disable-the-flash-player/297400/11 "2005-04-03T18:06:24Z")
In Internet Explorer for Windows XP SP2, there is a tool called Manage Add-ons under the Tools menu. I can easily disable Macromedia Flash from that tool. However, I believe the Manage Add-ons tool is _not_ available for IE on Windows 98/2000/NT/etc.