Disable Flash in a flash with Opera

November 8, 2002

Unlike some other browsers, Opera makes it easy to disable Flash.

Quick and easy: Press F12 and make sure there is NOT a check mark next to ‘enable plugins’

Advanced: If you want to disable Flash without disabling other plugins, you can also go to

File > Preferences > File Types

and look for

application/x-shockwave-flash

you can then set Opera’s preference for what it will do when it runs into Flash.

Personally I have just edited the MIME type and file extension, so that

application/x-shockwave-flash

became

application/x-shockwave-flash_OFF

and swf became swf_OFF

which will make it easier to re-enable if I should ever so choose by editing them again, and it makes it easy to see what MIME types you have turned OFF.

If you are really, really sure, you could delete the MIME type entry altogether, but I don’t recommend that because it isn’t necessary and this leaves you with a fail-safe in case you need to re-enable.

You could also delete the NPSWF32.dll from your hard drive, but that too is overkill for some people.

  • http://members.outpost10f.com/%7Ejor/ Jor

    I have just put NPSWF32.dll in my plugin-ignore.ini :)

    Ditto with NPAUDIO.DLL (a Netscrape audio player which likes to steal my MIME Types), and two other plugs I only want to use some of the time.

  • Anatoly

    I wonder how is it possible to change application/x-shockwave-flash to application/x-shockwave-flash_OFF if this field can not be edited in Opera 7.23?

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