Safari will start blocking all Flash content in macOS Sierra

Google Chrome's development team announced in May that the browser will stop showing Flash content without prior user approval, except for a few top sites such as YouTube and Facebook. 

Now, with the advent of macOS Sierra, Apple's Safari browser is joining the party. But it's taking it a step further: It will replace Flash content with HTML5 if possible, and if not, it will simply block all Flash content until the user explicitly approves it. 

This was explained by Apple developer Ricky Mondello (and unearthed byMacRumors), in a post on WebKit's official blog Tuesday. 

"On websites that offer both Flash and HTML5 implementations of content, Safari users will now always experience the modern HTML5 implementation, delivering improved performance and battery life," he wrote. 

And unlike Chrome, Safari will have no "whitelist" of top sites where Flash is allowed. 

"This policy and its benefits apply equally to all websites; Safari has no built-in list of exceptions," Mondello wrote. 

Given that basically every major browser except Microsoft's Edge and IE (Firefox gave up on Flash back in July 2015) will be blocking Flash by year's end, the developers that still build on that platform will be strongly compelled to move on from Flash as well. Given Flash's history of security flaws and bugs, we're quite happy to say that 2017 will be largely Flash-less.