Why can't I play Flash content on my Mac?

March 27, 2007 10:37 PM

Why can't I play Flash content on my Mac?

This is embarrassing...

Every browser on my machine (Firefox, Flock and Safari) have all suddenly stopped playing with Flash content, even though I have the Flash plug-in installed (click here for proof).

When I go to a page in Firefox that needs the plug-in, like YouTube, I get this.

I've tried installing the Flash plugin over and over again from here (I choose Option 1).

I've tried uninstalling the Flash plugin (using this DMG) and reinstalling it. Doesn't help at all.

What the hell is going on here?

Help!

posted by nasp to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Whoops! I just figured it out. Well, let's just say: I solved the problem.

I have no idea what was causing this to happen, but I fixed the issue by deleting every last item in my "Library/Internet Plug-Ins" folder (even the hidden files), then I copied over every last item in my other computer's "Library/Internet Plug-Ins" folder (which was playing Flash content just fine). Now all my browsers are playing Flash content again. Thus, it looks like the problem was with something BAD being in that folder, as opposed to something GOOD being missing.

Damn! Now I wasted an Ask MeFi question...
posted by nasp at 10:53 PM on March 27, 2007

Type 'about:plugins' in your Firefox address bar. Does it say that you have Shockwave Flash installed? Is it enabled?

Go to your hard drive -> Library -> Internet Plug-ins. Do you have something called 'Flash Player.plugin'? Is it a few megabytes, from Adobe, and do you have permissions to read it? Try looking in your home directory -> Library -> Internet Plug-ins as well. If not, you might have to copy this file by hand somehow.

Also, are you restarting Firefox each time you try installing?
posted by suedehead at 10:55 PM on March 27, 2007

On preview: nevermind, and hooray!
posted by suedehead at 10:55 PM on March 27, 2007

You could have also moved each Plugin one-by-one to another folder, noting which one was the problem - for future reference I suppose.

Also, don't worry about the wasted question. Your regular JPowers should be able to ask another one tomorrow...
posted by vacapinta at 11:12 PM on March 27, 2007

I had a similar problem. Turned out I had two Flash plug-ins installed, and the JavaScript that most sites use to detect Flash was looking for the new version. I had the new version (installed it several times trying to get rid of that dang "You need Flash" message) but for some reason the script was getting to the old version first and deciding I didn't have it.

Interestingly, it was Safari and OmniWeb that had the problem in my case, not Firefox. But, it is very likely the same thing. OmniWeb has a dialog to enable/disable plug-ins, so I turned off the old Flash plug-in there. (I kinda like the idea of not having Flash in Safari, so I have a secondary Flashless browser if I ever need one, so I didn't just pull the plug-in entirely.)

Also, the QuickTime plug-in can be configured to "grab" Flash movies, but the version of Flash it supports is not current. So I imagine it could cause a similar problem. Even if it were current, the version the JavaScript would get would be the version of the QuickTime plug-in, which probably wouldn't work for the Flash detection script.
posted by kindall at 8:09 AM on March 28, 2007

Your regular JPowers should be able to ask another one tomorrow...

Matt and Jess don't like it when people use sockpuppets to get around the posting limit...
posted by Dasein at 9:25 AM on March 28, 2007

Also, don't worry about the wasted question. Your regular JPowers should be able to ask another one tomorrow...

Busted!
posted by nasp at 1:32 PM on March 28, 2007