Ultimate Guide - Adobe Flash Player Global Settings

For better or worse, millions of websites rely on Adobe’s Flash Player to display anything, from animated games, online home to videos posted on Youtube. In most web browsers, most of the time, Flash works just fine. But Flash content does not always run smoothly. More to the point, given half a chance, sonic Flash-bearing websites would play fast and loose with your privacy.

It is perhaps surprising, then, just how few people realise that the Flash plug-in can be tweaked in numerous ways. Sonic techniques may improve performance, while others bolster security - but all are worth investigating. In this article we pick the topic how to access Flash Player’s various control panels and what to do with the settings you will find.

Adobe Flash player settings

Flash player settings are divided into a couple of different but overlapping areas. accessed in different ways. We will start with an ad-hoc method, which is useful for modifying settings on the fly.



To start, visit a website that has some Flash content - like Youtube. Click a link to watch any video, then right-click the playback window and choose Settings from the pop-tip menu. Note that this option is accessed in the same way on any Flash element, including animations and adverts.

An adobe flash player settings dialogue box will appear in the middle of the Flash element (which, in this case, means the Youtube playback window). Though perhaps not immediately obvious, there are five navigation tabs running along the bottom of this dialogue.

Local Storage

The middle one - Local Storage, represented by a folder icon shows how much space on the computer’s hard disk is being used by the Flash element displayed in active website - a mere 2KB at the moment. The slider control above is used to the maximum amount of local storage the Flash element can occupy: the default is 100KB (again, a tiny amount). If you are experiencing problems with a particular Flash content (like choppy Youtube playback, perhaps), then click and drag the slider to the right to increase the amount - all the way to ‘unlimited’, if you want.

Display

Now click the left most tab.This settings panels controls a single but very useful tick box, labelled ‘Enable hardware acceleration’. With this ticked, the execution display of Flash content should, in theory be faster and smoother. However, the use of hardware acceleration can also cause problems, particularly if your computer does not have the most up-to-date graphics card drivers. If you experience problems, then - such as distortion when watching Youtube videos - disable hardware acceleration by removing the tick from this box.

Privacy



The second tab along is labelled privacy. The settings here are used to determine whether or not a particular website can have access to your computer’s microphone and webcam (if attached, obviously). Youtube. for example, offers users the option to record and upload videos directly, which requires access to the webcam and mic. Other websites, though, may have no business trying to use these devices. Make your selection by clicking the Allow or Deny radio button and then, if you want Flash to remember the setting for this particular website, click to tick the Remember box.

Microphone and Webcam

The settings on the remaining two tabs are used to tweak the microphone’s recording level and the selected webcam. In the unlikely event there is more than one webcam attached to your PC, select the desired one from the dropdown menu on the last tab. On the microphone tab, drag the slider control while talking into the mic to set the recording level: a high green bar is good, but if it moves into the yellow or red, recording could be distorted. If you are recording in close quarters, meanwhile, ticking the Reduce Echo box could improve clarity.

Global Settings

Various flash settings are managed and applied globally, meaning they affect all Flash content encountered online. In Chrome or Firefox, these can be accessed by right-clicking any Flash element and choosing Global Settings from the pop-up menu.



In Internet Explorer (and all other browsers), they are displayed by visiting a dedicated area of Adobe’s website. Click the links down the left-hand side to explore. As we said, there is some overlap with the settings already explored, though finer controls are on offer here. Click the Web Privacy panel link, for example, and you can manage the list of sites allowed access to your PC’s webcam and mic. And if you get annoyed by Flash’s seemingly endless updates, use the dropdown menu on the Global Notifications Settings panel to opt for less-frequent nagging.