Flash is dead

[mkeck]

Hello,

since Adobe does not support Flash anymore and nearly all browsers and OS too, I think it does not make sense to include follow things:

• swfobject
• flash fallback for upload
• pupload flash

[fierevere]

Duplicate of #52576.

thank you, its already been reported here:
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/52576

[SergeyBiryukov]

Hi there, welcome to WordPress Trac! Thanks for the ticket.

Reopening, as I think this is different enough to be considered separately from #52576, which only focused on a single message in MediaElement.js.

Remove swfobject and swfupload from codebase since Flash is unsupported now

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/52699

[flixos90]

@johnbillion There hasn't been any activity on this in years, but there is the PR ​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/3043 by @tabrisrp that hasn't been reviewed yet.

I know it's low priority, but if the patch is good, we may want to get this in soon?

[johnbillion]

There is a chance that a plugin or theme has swfobject or swfupload as a script dependency even though it's not actually used. Let's rip these out in 6.9 early.

[adamsilverstein]

The PR looks good to me. We discussed this at the Performance bug scrub today and this seems ready to go for 6.9 (early).

AH. Hmm no we need a PR udpate as this one has conflicts with current trunk.

This PR removes swfobject and swfupload, as Flash is no longer supported. These scripts are outdated and no longer needed.

Trac ticket: #52699
Original PR: #3043

[sainathpoojary]

Hi @audrasjb,
I’ve resolved the merge conflicts and submitted the PR. Please review it when you have a moment.

[adamsilverstein]

Spent some time looking thru plugins that reference 'swfupload' (​https://wpdirectory.net/search/01JWZN3R8JSBXT60P053NW2R46). Although some plugins reference the handle, none appear to actually use or rely on it.

I also refreshed the PR (​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/8621) to resolve conflicts and remove a few unrelated changes. This should be good to go.

[audrasjb]

Thanks for refreshing the PR @adamsilverstein. yeah I definitely think there shouldn't be any strong dependency from active projects of the ecosystem on swfupload as now. Worth removing this when we can :)

[adamsilverstein]

In 60281:

Media: remove swfupload flash fallback for media uploads.

Remove swfobject and swfupload. These scripts are no longer supported and Flash is dead.

Props sainathpoojary, audrasjb, mkeck, tabrisrp.

Fixes #52699.

[desrosj]

Flash received a final eulogy in the miscellaneous dev note for developer-focused changed: ​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/11/17/miscellaneous-developer-focused-changes-in-6-9/