How to manually check for Flash updates on your Mac

Flash Player Icon

Flash is among one of the most targeted web platforms for injecting computers with malware, including Macs, and that’s why Adobe is always turning around with updates for Flash all the darned time.

If you’re like me, then your security is important to you, and you may not trust automatic updates to deliver updates to you quickly enough.

This tutorial will show you how you can make sure Flash is up to date on your Mac, the manual way.

Checking for Flash updates manually on your Mac

There are two ways to see if you have the latest version of Flash installed on your Mac, and we’ll go over both of them with you.

Method 1: System Preferences

The first, and in my opinion, the best way to check and see if Flash is up to date on your system is to check directly inside of the System Preferences app on your Mac. To do that, follow these steps:

1) Launch the System Preferences app on your Mac and click on the Flash Player preferences pane.

Update Flash on Mac Manually Flash Player Prefs

2) When you’re in the Flash Player preferences pane, click on the Updates tab.

Adobe Flash Player Check for Updates Now

3) At the bottom of the preferences pane, click on the Check Now button next to both the NPAPI and PPAPI plug-ins where applicable.

4) If you have an update, your Mac will tell you. In my case, I had a Flash update waiting even though I have automatic updates enabled on my Mac:

Flash Update on Mac after manual check

5) If an update is available, click on the Yes button to update. If no updates are available, you can close the System Preferences app because you have the latest version of Flash installed.

Method 2: Adobe’s Website

The other way you can tell whether or not you have an update waiting for Flash on your Mac, and this works for PC owners too, is to go to your preferred web browser and visit Adobe’s Flash website. It’ll tell you whether you’re up to date or not.

To do that, follow these steps:

1) Launch your favorite web browser and go to the Adobe Flash website.

Check Flash Version on Mac Web Browser

2) Take note of the Version Information box in the middle of the page. It’ll tell you if you have the latest version of Flash installed or not.

In my case, I am out of date, so I can click on the Update Now button to download and install the latest version of Flash on my system.

Wrapping up

That’s all there is to manually checking to see if you have the latest version of Flash installed on your system.

It’s generally a good practice to check from time to time because Flash is a major security hole for machines all over the world. When people leave it out of date for too long, hackers tend to find holes in it and exploit it for personal gain.

As you can see, despite having automatic updates enabled on my Mac, I still had an update, so there’s a lesson to be learned in this post for everybody, whether you use automatic updates or not.

Also read: Deleting Adobe Flash from your Mac

How often do you update Flash on your Mac? Do you even use Flash? Share in the comments!