Determining the version of Adobe Flash on an OS X system

You can determine the version of the Adobe Flash Player present on an Apple OS X online by visiting the the Adobe Flash Information page at BrowserSPY with a web browser. You will see information similar to the following displayed, if the Adobe Flash Player plug-in is installed for the browser.

Flash version via JavaScript	21,0,0
Flash version via navigator.plugins object	Shockwave Flash 21.0 r0

Note: you may see commas, instead of periods, between the parts of the version number. Also, this shows you the version for the Adobe Flash Player plug-in installed for that browser. The plug-in version for other browsers on the system may differ. E.g., the version you would see if you visited the page with Google Chrome may not be the version you would see in Firefox, or what you might see for Safari.

Or you can obtain the information from a graphical user interface (GUI) on the system by the following steps:

Click on the Apple icon in the upper, left-hand corner of the screen then select About This Mac
Click on More Info; this step is needed on earlier versions of OS X, such as Mountain Lion (version 10.8), but not later versions such as Yosemite (version 10.10)
Click on System Report then select Software and then Applications.
Scroll through the software list until you see "Adobe Flash Player Install Manager". You will see infomation similar to that shown below:

You can obtain information on the version of the Adobe Flash Player present on the system from the command line, i.e., from a Terminal window, by running the system_profiler command and then piping the output from that command into the grep command. If you look at the 8 lines after it appears, you can also see when it was last updated and the location for the application on the system.

$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep "Adobe Flash" -A 8
    Adobe Flash Player Install Manager:

      Version: 21.0.0.182
      Obtained from: Identified Developer
      Last Modified: 4/11/16, 11:13 AM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): No
      Signed by: Developer ID Application: Adobe Systems, Inc., Developer ID Certification Authority, Apple Root CA
      Location: /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app

    Script Editor:

      Version: 2.7
      Obtained from: Apple
      Last Modified: 12/21/15, 1:00 PM
      Kind: Intel
      64-Bit (Intel): Yes

The Adobe Flash Player application can usually be found at /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app. An alternative means of determining the version from the command line, i.e. a shell prompt, is to look for the line that occurs after CFBundleShortVersionString in the Info.plist file for the software, which is found at /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app/Contents/Info.plist.

$ grep -A 1 CFBundleShortVersionString "/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app/Contents/Info.plist"
	<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
	<string>21.0.0.182</string>

Or, to see just the version number for CFBundleShortVersionString, you can use the following command:

$ grep -A 1 CFBundleShortVersionString "/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app/Contents/Info.plist" | cut -d">" -f2 | cut -d"<" -f1 | tail -n 1
21.0.0.182
$

Firefox

You can see the version of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in installed within Firefox by clicking on the three horizontal bars at the upper, right-hand corner of the window, which will open a menu of options, then select Add-ons. Under Plugins, you should see a Shockwave Flash entry that will tell you the version of the plug-in installed within Firefox.

If it is out-of-date, you can click on Update Now to update it.

Google Chrome

You can determine the version of the Adobe Flash plugin installed within Chrome by typing chrome://plugins/ in the address bar within the browser. You will then see information on all of the plug-ins installed within Google Chrome, including the one for Adobe Flash Player. Note: the version number of the plug-in installed may be different than the version installed for other browsers on the system or shown by the operating system when you use the GUI or command line methods. E.g., you could have an older version installed as a plug-in.

Safari

To check the version of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in installed within Safari, take the following steps:

Hit the Command and comma keys simultaneously to open Sarari's Preferences windowa
Click on the Security icon.
Click on the Plug-ins Settings button. You will then see the plug-ins that are installed for Safari.

References:

Determining the version of the OS and applications under OS X
Created: April 6, 2015 Last modified: March 6, 2016 MoonPoint Support

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