Difficulty Level: Easy
What You Need:
>> A Mac running Mac OS X, preferably 10.6 (see Step 3)
>> The latest version of Flash Player (see Step 1)
Unless you’re living under a rock, you probably heard about the battle between Apple and Adobe: Adobe wants Flash on the iPhone, and Apple does not. In his “Thoughts on Flash” open letter, Steve Jobs even outlined six reasons why Flash is not allowed on the iPhone.
We’re firmly on Apple’s side, and we’re betting that you are, too. We’re tired of trying to watch Flash videos on our Mac, only to witness the fans roar at full throttle, the entire machine slow to a crawl, the Flash plug-in eat up our CPU usage, and then Safari crash.
Until websites widely adopt the new HTML5 standard, which is the modern way to play videos in formats such as H.264 without the need for proprietary plug-ins like Flash Player, we’ve got some tips on how you can have the best of both worlds: How to responsibly use Flash when you need to, but still retain control of your Mac’s precious resources.
We wish we could tell you that updating to the latest version of Flash will solve all of your Flash problems, but it won't.
Update to the latest version of Adobe Flash. It’s always a good idea to update to the latest version of Flash, which you can download at adobe.com/products/flashplayer. Also, if you’re running Mac OS 10.6.3 or later, you can download a prerelease version of Adobe’s Gala Flash Player at labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html, which is supposed to improve performance under Snow Leopard.
How is it even possible for the Flash plug-in to be eating up 103% of our CPU? We're just trying to watch an episode of The Apprentice!
You can see which processes are taxing your CPU by using Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities). Sort by the CPU column to bring the worst offenders to the top. If necessary, you can quit or force quit them here, too. In Leopard and earlier, you won’t see a separate listing for Flash; its usage is combined with your web browser’s usage. For an even easier way to track your CPU usage, install iStat Menus ($16, bjango.com), which lists your top five CPU resource hogs right in your menu bar.
Snow Leopard will tremendously stabilize your web browsing experience, because it doesn't allow Flash to crash Safari.
One of the smartest decisions you can make is to upgrade your Intel Mac to Snow Leopard, because a crash of the Flash plug-in will no longer take down your entire Safari web browser with it. Flash will just crash itself while Safari keeps on humming.
Notice the ultra-tiny red "Switch to HTML5 player" link in the lower-right corner of this Vimeo movie.
Some websites are switching away from Flash in favor of HTML5. Let them know that you support this decision by using the HTML5 version of their sites, when available. YouTube has an HTML5 beta test that you can join at youtube.com/html5. Vimeo includes a “Switch to HTML5 player” link below all of its videos. If your favorite video site (cough, cough, Hulu) doesn’t yet support HTML5, email and ask them.
ClickToFlash displays this box instead of any Flash content. Simply click it to see that content.
Install ClickToFlash for Safari (donations requested, clicktoflash.com) or Flashblock for Firefox (donations requested, addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433). These plug-ins block all Flash content on webpages unless you allow it on a case-by-case basis with one simple click of your mouse. If you visit certain Flash-based websites regularly, you can whitelist those sites so you don’t have to click the Flash elements to see them.
Even if you approve Flash content in your browser, you still have no control over how much of your CPU the Flash plug-in will consume. If Flash starts hogging your processor again, your fans will kick in again, your computer will run hot, your Mac will slow down, and your battery will drain quickly. If this happens, you can quit Flash in Activity Monitor, or you can turn to BashFlash (donations requested, bashflash.com). BashFlash places an icon in your menu bar to let you know if the Flash plug-in is trying to hijack your Mac. If so, click on its icon and you can instantly kill the Flash plug-in.
