Unable to Export to Flash/SWF Anymore

Hi.

Flash is a broad term and therefore some clarifications are necessary.

The IDE that used to be called Adobe Flash now is called Adobe Animate.

The Flash Player is a runtime that is indeed not available as a plugin for mainstream browsers anymore, but it is still available for desktop applications.

The Flash Player is still largely used by animators because this is the program that executes the SWF files created in Adobe Animate when the Test command (Ctrl/Cmd + Enter/Return) or the Publish (⌥/Shift + F12) command are used.

The SWF file format is still largely used by many AS3 technologies, like Adobe/Harman AIR, Adobe/Harman Flex, Apache Royale, and even by Haxe technologies, like OpenFL and HaxeFlixel.

Through Harman/Adobe AIR, that creates SWF based native applications for desktop, android, and iOS, many apps and games are still being developed for the App Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store, Steam, itch.io, among others.

Also, the SWF format and the ActionScript 2 and 3 languages are coming back to the web through the Flash Player emulator written in Rust called Ruffle (https://ruffle.rs/).

So saying that "Flash is dead" can be very misleading.

Regards,

JC

Its frustrating that the correct answer to this is that Adobe removed a fully functioning aspect of Illustrator that is useful to animators. I understand that Flash is dead for the web, but as a formet for vector animation SWF is really helpful and useful. I would like them to return this feature especially since the version that last allowed SWF eport apparently cannot be installed on an M1 Mac based off what CC is telling me. I don't see any good reason why this setting should be removed.

It looks like Adobe stopped Flash support after December 31, 2020. Since then Flash support has been removed from across the Adobe product line including Illustrator, Acrobat, InDesign, and the video apps. Largely for security reasons. So the ship sailed 11 months ago.

To help secure your system, Adobe blocked Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021. Major browser vendors have disabled and will continue to disable Flash Player from running.

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It’s unlikely that there is a way to enable Flash in a current version of Illustrator. It may no longer be in the code. Maybe the last time you saw it on the old computer, it was in an old version of Illustrator.

Flash officially dies at the end of the year, perhaps that's the reason it's no longer an option.

It should be on purpose though, exporting to Flash was removed from Scripting API as well.