How To Hack Adobe Flash Onto Your Modern Android Phone

How to Hack Adobe Flash onto Your Modern Android Phone

BY GreenBot Staff

GreenBot Staff

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All Articles by GreenBot Staff

Published 15 Apr 2014

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Apple may have crushed Adobe’s mobile Flash plans with an iron fist. Still, the prolific ActionScript code continues to pepper websites across the net. Flash for Android was abandoned after Adobe dropped its final release in 2013, ending support for the platform at Android version 4.0.x.But as much as we want to move to an HTML world, Adobe’s web plugin continues to be supported on desktop operating systems. This means that if you want to experience the entirety of the interactive web on your Android device, there’s no choice but to saddle up with Flash. Thankfully for us, a highly resourceful Xda-developers member who goes by the handle surviveland couldn’t sit idly by. With a brand new Nexus 5 that could not display Flash content. He dug through the Flash 11.1 Android app code and cobbled together a modified version that will run on Android 4.4. To take advantage and get Flash running on your Android 4.4 device, you’ll need to install the Dolphin Browser and the hacked Flash player. You can do this in any order. In our case, we installed the Flash player first, then the Dolphin browser.

Adobe Flash Player

To enable installations of apps downloaded outside of the Play store, go to Settings, Security, and tick the checkbox for Unknown Sources. Then, download and install the modified flash player from surviveland’s post in the xda-developers forum.

Dolphin Browser

Adobe Flash Player 2 — Dolphin Browser for Android.

Then, install the Dolphin Browser from the Play store. After installing Dolphin Browser, you’ll need to update a few settings to enable Flash integration. To access the settings, launch Dolphin Browser, tap on the circular dolphin icon at the bottom left of your screen. Then tap on the menu icon displaying 3 horizontal bars. Tap the Settings button, ensure the Dolphin Tab Bar pack is turned on with a green checkmark, it’s enabled by default. Then tap User Agent and select Desktop. This makes the Dolphin browser identify as Safari on Mac OS X websites. This is very useful as many sites will refuse to display Flash content. If they think you are using a mobile browser.

Adobe Flash Player 4 — Set Flash Player to ways On in the Dolphin settings.

While still in the Settings menu, scroll down, tap on Tab, then Flash Player, and select Always On. That’s it! You’re now ready to view Flash content on your Android 4.4 device!

Make A Visit

Adobe Flash Player 3 — Viewing Intel’s Museum of Me Adobe Flash app movie on a Moto X.

We tested Flash on my Moto X, running Android 4.4.2. Visit a few sites, starting with the Flash Player webpage, which plays a simple animation. For a more advanced test, we used Intel’s Museum of Me web app, which harvests data, photos videos from your Facebook account to create a custom video. The Museum of Me Flash app worked great for the most part. But we had issues trying to jump around the video timeline. Many Flash applications were developed for desktops only. Some functionality may not work with touchscreens. The Flash player on Android also loads video content more slowly than its desktop counterpart. You may see additional incompatibilities for some Flash web apps.