Nick Davis

How I made Flash and Google Chrome play nicely together on my Mac

Disclaimer / credit
This is not the kind of article I usually post on here but it helped me so maybe it will help some other people too. I am not an IT ‘expert’ (as in the maintenance and setup of your computer) but it worked for me, maybe it won’t work so well for you but no harm in trying eh? Oh and maybe it’s a good idea to backup your computer before following the advice of some random guy on the Internet. All credit for this solution goes to the person who made this YouTube video and not me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVB5WoqkWPI

The problem

Google Chrome just seemed generally sluggish all the time particularly on my iMac (mid 2011), though also slightly on my Macbook Air (late 2010).

What fixed it for me

  1. I quit Google Chrome
  2. I uninstalled Flash from the Mac, I have deleted the program now so I can’t show you but I believe you need to find a program (do a Spotlight search) called Adobe Flash Install Manager (or similar). Run that and there’s an uninstall option there. Just go through all the steps. (If you don’t have this program or can’t find it I can’t help I’m afraid I can only share what worked for me)
  3. I uninstalled Google Chrome
  4. I re-installed Google Chrome
  5. (Bonus point: If you’ve got 1,000,000 Chrome extensions you’re no longer using you might consider removing a few of these too but it was the Flash step that made the big difference)

Why this (apparently) works

Turns out it’s something to do with Flash (surprise eh). Seems like Google Chrome doesn’t like the standard install of Flash on a Mac though and gets upset.

However if you install Chrome – and you DON’T already have Flash installed – it installs a module(?) that runs Flash anyway and for whatever reason everything then plays much nicer together.

Considering I have Chrome open pretty much all the time, doing the above made everything run much smoother for me. I hope it helps a few other people too.

In