Storyline 3 No Longer Requires Adobe Flash Player

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Since Adobe discontinued Flash, we retired Flash publishing and the Articulate Mobile Player.

Great news! You no longer need Adobe Flash Player to create e-learning courses in Storyline 3.

As of December 3, 2019 (build 3.8.20838.0), the Storyline 3 authoring app is completely free of Flash. You can still publish Flash output, but the Flash Player doesn’t need to be installed to use Storyline 3.

Since the Flash Player is automatically installed on Windows 10 and Windows 8 computers, removing it can be a difficult task—though Microsoft will likely remove or disable it for us in January 2021. However, if you’re using Windows 7, you can uninstall the Flash Player using an Adobe utility.

How Flash Features Behave in Flash-Free Environments

Storyline 3 has all the same features as before, but you’ll notice a few minor differences when adding Flash files to your projects, depending on whether the Flash Player is installed on your system or not.

Flash Player Is Installed

Flash Player Isn't Installed

The placeholder image for a Flash movie (SWF file) is the first frame of the movie.

The placeholder image for a Flash movie (SWF file) is a gray box.

Some SWF and FLV videos can be previewed using the Preview button on the Options tab on the ribbon.

SWF and FLV videos can’t be previewed using the Preview button on the Options tab on the ribbon.

SWF logos won’t show in the player preview if you’re using Storyline 3 build 3.8.20838.0 or later since the player preview displays HTML5 content.

SWF logos will show in earlier builds of Storyline 3 since the player preview relied on the Flash Player.

SWF logos won’t show in the player preview.

To see your Flash content, publish your course with Flash output and view it in a Flash-enabled browser.

Reminder: If the Flash Player isn’t installed on your computer and you’re using a Flash-dependent build of Storyline 3 (3.7.20003.0 or earlier), Storyline won’t open at all.