Chrome 54 for Mac is out, replaces old Flash-based YouTube embeds with HTML5 player

Google Chrome logo (medium)

Google stopped using Adobe Flash for YouTube’s desktop video player back in January 2016, replacing it with an HTML5 counterpart that doesn’t require any special browser plug-in to function.

Last evening saw the release of Chrome 54 for Mac, Windows and Linux which continues on Google’s mission to ditch Flash in favor of HTML5: the new version replaces old Flash-based YouTube embeds on websites with HTML5.

As VentureBeat notes, the old Flash-based YouTube embeds still exist all over the web, but Chrome 54 now takes care of that. Chrome 54 also implements 21 security fixes.

Chrome 54 for Android and iOS are on their way.

Changing how Chrome handles YouTube embeds has strengthened Chrome’s security while de-emphasizing Flash in favor of HTML5 has allowed engineers to improve its responsiveness, efficiency and power consumption for many websites.

TUTORIAL: How to remove Adobe Flash from your Mac

“HTML5 is much lighter and faster, and publishers are switching over to speed up page loading and save you more battery life,” said the search firm.

Chrome 54 also provides support for the custom elements V1 spec which lets web developers create custom HTML tags and define their API/behavior in JavaScript. An improved BroadcastChannel API permits one-to-many messaging between windows, tabs and iframes—useful for complex web apps that use multiple windows/tabs.

Released in September 2016, Chrome 53 blocked Flash by default. In addition to delivering web video, more than 90 percent of Flash on the web loads behind the scenes to support things like page analytics, which slows your computer down.

TUTORIAL: How to enable Chrome’s MacBook battery-saving feature

If you already have Chrome installed on your Mac, its silent updating mechanism should ensure that you’re always running the latest version available. You can check for Chrome updates manually at any time by choosing About Google Chrome in the Chrome menu.

Chrome 54 is a staggered release so it’ll roll out over the coming days and weeks.

The Chrome installer for macOS, Windows and Linux is available for download directly from google.com/chrome.

The full list of developer and user-facing features, improvements and fixes in Chrome 54 is provided in the official changelog. Upcoming Chrome and Chromium blog posts will detail all of the “new features and big efforts” in Chrome 54, as per Google.

Chrome 55 for Mac is arriving in late November with under-the-hood improvements that will speed up your browsing as the browser will no longer take up as much memory on websites that use JavaScript as does the current stable version.

Source: Google