Having trouble installing Adobe Flash Player? Identify your issue and try the corresponding solution. For Firefox on any OS, see Enable Flash Player for Firefox. For Safari on Mac OS, see Enable Flash Player for Safari. For Google Chrome, see Enable Flash Player for Chrome. For Opera, see Enable.

After my last blog, about recent updates to the Flash Player, a reader was nice enough to pass along a tip that I am now passing along to you.

I track updates to the Flash Player on my FlashTester.org site, and a number of times Chrome has been late installing an update. The browser would report that it was up to date, yet Flash would be a release behind. My last blog mentioned the helplessness of Chrome users to force an update to Flash. It turns out, we are not helpless.

In addition to the standard, well-known mechanism, shown below, for updating Chrome (hamburger menu -> Help -> About Google Chrome), Google has a second system that they sometimes use for Flash.

Chrome, like all browsers, is a large complex package. On the Windows 7 computer that I normally use, the

folder is currently 390 megabytes and contains 88 files. In addition, Chrome stores files in

Many of the files in this second location are the browser cache, but, even ignoring the cache, Chrome has 3,768 files here consuming 239 megabytes.

Rather than do a full refresh for a small change, Google's second update system does small updates for small changes. The parts of Chrome that can be individually updated are called components and the Flash Player, embedded in Chrome, is one of these components.

Google mentions this in an article targeted at IT administrators called Manage Chrome updates on Windows. It makes a good first impression. The article says that the 'Chrome Component Updater allows the Chrome engineering team to release small updates to parts of Chrome on a very rapid schedule.' Compared to the full browser update, the article notes that the Component Updater uses a small amount of bandwidth and only runs when the browser itself is running.

Update Adobe Flash Player Chrome

The downside, for me at least, has been that there was no interface to the Chrome Component Updater.

The tip that I received (thanks Michael) was that there is, in fact, an interface to it, and, that the Component Updater can be used to update Flash.

The interface is a URL, chrome://components

The number of Chrome components varies by operating system. The screen shot above, taken on Windows 10, indicates there are nine, only the first five are shown. There are six components on OS X 10.10, eight on Windows 7, nine on Windows 8.1 and two on Chrome OS 49.

The Flash Player is identified as 'pepper_flash'. Simply click the gray 'Check for update' button and the Chrome Component Updater will not only check for updates, it will also download and install an available update.

The 'Component updated' message in the screen shot above is the result of upgrading Flash from version 21.0.0.213 to 21.0.0.216. If there is no available update, the button click response is 'Component not updated'. If your computer is slow and/or the component is large, you may briefly see a 'component downloading' message too.

In my tests, the Chrome Component Updater worked consistently across Windows, OS X and Chrome OS. The only downside is that on Chrome OS (tested on version 49) Flash is not an available component.

So, there is no excuse for Windows and Mac users to run Chrome with an old version of Flash. Good thing too, considering how buggy it has been over the years.

How to Troubleshoot the Flash Player Not Working on Chrome Error

Flash Player Not Working

One of the common Google Chrome browser issues is Adobe Flash Player not working. It is something that can happen in Windows or Mac PC, but there are many simple workarounds to troubleshoot the issue, such as the ones mentioned below.

Install Latest Browser Updates

A new version of Chrome may have bug fixes if Google developers integrate that in the browser as per reports from users concerning Flash Player issues. To update Google Chrome to a new version, click the three-line menu to the upper right and navigate to Help > About Google Chrome and wait while it Checking for Updates. Wait until Google Chrome completes checking the same, and then install the new version, if it finds any.

Activer Adobe Flash Player Google Chrome Mac

Enable Flash Option in Settings

Click the Settings button in Chrome and go to the Advanced tab in the next window. Then, look for Content Settings under the said tab. After that, click Flash and ensure that you have selected the Ask First (Recommended) option. Also, see to it if any website is listed under Blocked, and unblock them if you find any.

Disable a Chrome Flag

Key in chrome://flags/#prefer-html-over-flash verbatim on the address bar of the browser and press Enter. In case your Google Chrome browser is outdated, you will land up on a page titled Experiments and can find Prefer HTML Over Flash. If you find that option in Chrome Flags, disable it to see if that fixes the Adobe Flash Player not working on Chrome error due to its unresponsiveness.

Clear Browser Cache

This particular workaround for the Flash Player not working on Chrome browser issue only takes away a few seconds of your session of surfing the web. Navigate to Settings > More Tools and select Clear Browsing Data. You can then choose the beginning of time and choose only cached images and files to clear only that and see if it works.

If not, it is high time to uninstall the Flash Player from the computer, be it that of Windows or Mac PC, and reinstall its latest version from the official website. There can be a bug in the software sometimes, so reinstalling it might fix the issues.