How to check if Flash player is installed

Report · May 24, 2016

Hi, I'd like to know if it's possible to detect if the flash player plugin is installed on acrobat when a document is opened. I was hoping I could do this through javascript.

I have created a pdf document with some embedded videos. I can view them in Acrobat on my computer but my colleague can't view them on hers because she doesn't have flash player installed. This document will be sent out to a number of people that may also not have flash player.

My idea is to put the rich media content on a separate hidden layer and then use javascript to detect if flash player plugin is installed. If it is installed, the layer will become visible. Otherwise it will stay hidden.

I'm not sure if this is even possible but I thought I'd ask the question just in case. Any help would be hugely appreciated...

Report · May 25, 2016

You can get a list of all active players via JavaScript. See here for an example of getting all MP3 players:

Acrobat DC SDK Documentation - Accessing a list of active players

If you do not specify a player type in the call to getPlayers(), it will search for all players. If you find the Flash player, it will be reported like this:

id: vnd.adobe.swname:MACR_FlashPlayer

name: Flash

version: 21.0.0.242

mimeTypes: application/x-shockwave-flash,application/futuresplash

Report · Jun 03, 2016

Awesome! I think I'll be able to create an array with getPlayers(), check if the player is in the array and change the layer visibility based on the result. I'll post again if I can get something going. Thanks!