The Google Nexus devices were some of the first to be updated with Jelly Bean (Android OS 4.1/4.2). This is one of the luxuries of owning a Google device. It’s also a bit of a course. A big change with Jelly Bean is you won’t be able to enjoy flash content on your device, simply because the Adobe Flash app is not available for Android 4.1 and above.
The good news is, there are still ways to get Flash support on your Android. While many of the mobile sites are using HTML 5, there are still a lot of sites out there using Flash on them. The solution I am going to talk about today is a pretty simple one; just download and install an APK .
Get the APK
Before you install the Flash APK, You’ll need to make sure you can install applications that are from the Google Play Store. To do this, you’ll need to go into your phones Settings. In the settings menu, go into the “Applications” tab and make sure the checkbox for “Unknown sources” is checked. Once you’ve done this, you are ready to install APK.
Note: On some device, the “Unknown Sources” can be found in the Security option instead.
To get the APK, venture over to the XDA Developers forum and download it. Here is a link to the forum post. Or to save you a few clicks, scan this QR code to download the APK right to your device.
The APK should download to your device . If you went to the forum and downloaded the APK, you will need to transfer it over to your phone or tablet. Once it’s on your phone or tablet, you’ll need to open the APK to install it.
What will happen next
If you’re using a device that currently doesn’t support Flash, you probably used to seeing something like this on the screen when you navigate to a website.
Once you open up the Flash APK and install it, you’ll be taken to the configuration settings. I’ll be totally honest with you, I didn’t get it to work with the pre-installed Google Chrome for Android. However, once I set Firefox for Android as my default browser, everything worked fine. Also, Flash worked on a couple of other browsers I tested.
Here are a couple of screen captures using the desktop version of the site. The reason I showed the desktop version of the site is because the mobile version work just fine without Flash. Many of the Android browsers have the option to request a page as if it were a desktop computer. To change the way your phone or tablet requests a page from a website, go to the phone menu while you’re on the page and select “Request Desktop site”.
Flash Installed
Plugin Working
Final thought
Almost what sites are going to HTML 5 or have some sort of mobile version or responsive website to accommodate mobile devices, not everyone is there yet. By having Flash on your Android phone or tablet will probably be useful for a while yet.
How have you got around your phone not supporting Flash so far?
Trevor is a freelance writer covering topics ranging from the Android OS to free web and desktop applications. When he is not writing about mobile productivity, He is coaching and playing the world’s greatest game… Soccer.
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