No Sound in FF After Flash Removal
Today FF removed Flash while I was in the middle of listening to a music broadcast. Suddenly I had no sound. I panicked. I checked everything but it all looked ok. I opened another browser (Microsoft Edge) and I did have sound there. I know Flash is going away but I listen to a lot of video and need to know what it is I am supposed to do in order to get sound in FF. I run Win10 Home, version 1909. installed on 1/14/2020. What I did was to reinstall Flash and then finished listening to my shows. I hope you are able to help me. Thanks Helene
All Replies (5)
Nobody has an answer for this? Nobody has a clue what went wrong? What's gonna happen on January 1?
This is likely not a problem with Flash, but something else. Your system details still show Shockwave Flash 32.0 r0 as installed. Also Flash is hardly used these days to play media files as most (important) websites will have made the change to HTML5 for playing media files and Flash will only be blocked in January.
Did you try to reboot the computer to see if that brings back the sound ?
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-video-audio-problems-firefox-windows
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-common-audio-and-video-issues
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/html5-audio-and-video-firefox
If you use extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) that can block content (Adblock Plus, NoScript, DuckDuckGo PE, Disconnect, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin) always make sure such extensions do not block content.
- make sure your extensions and filters are updated to the latest version
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-extensions-themes-to-fix-problems
Firefox shows a purple shield instead of a gray shield at the left end of the location/address bar in case Enhanced Tracking Protection is blocking content. You can click shield icon for more detail and possibly disable the protection. You can check the Web Console for messages about blocked content.
Rebooting is the first thing I did as I thought I did something weird. Didn't fix it. Then I did a search as described and read some of what you posted and another link opened the Microsoft browser I don't usually use and there was sound there. So I went back and double checked and there was still no sound coming out of FF browser and I checked what I had been watching and something else on Youtube just to see if it was that page that was an issue. Nope. So I did a computer search for Flash to see if it was there. Firefox had just removed it. I actually saw a dialog box come up about its removal and I thought I clicked do not uninstall but I guess i was too late. I reinstalled it and, voila, sound came back.
I use DuckDuckGo and it has never blocked audio/video content before so I don't know why it would now. I do turn it off on certain sites to be able to see some things such as department stores where I want to see posted comments about a product or news sites that are free and ask me to turn it off so their ads can support the content but that's about it. I don't use any of the other extensions you cited. It is updated.
Didn't see a purple shield but I will do a test of this at some point this week and see if it's there. i didn't know to look for that but I have to think not as I probably would have noticed that as it would have stuck out like a sore thumb.
Firefox can't remove Flash as this plugin is installed as a separate Windows application. If the NPAPI Flash plugin that Firefox uses was really uninstalled then some other software must have done this or there was a problem with updating
You can check the version of the currently installed Flash plugin here:
Flash EOL:
You are probably right. Windows must have removed it. I have the most recent as I just reinstalled it. But that doesn't solve my issue of why no sound. As I said, I will do a test and remove it again and see what happens.