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Adobe Flash runs better on MacOS than Windows, why?

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So let me give some details, I am running Firefox 71.0 (64-bit) on my Mac and Windows10 PC ... however the Windows OS is running on BootCamp off the Mac. The Mac App of Firefox seems to give a much more pleasant experience playing flash games like Alpha Penguin but the Windows Program is extremely laggy. Is there any reason why? Both OSes are using the same hardware to it's max capabilities.

I'd also like to mention that I have an older version of Firefox on my daily solo Windows 8.1 machine and it's lower specked and Flash games like Alpha Penguin play pretty well(there are some lag areas but not as much as my BootCamp situation) but when using a newer version of Firefox on that Win8.1 machine Flash seems to be as equally as bad as the BootCamp Windows10.

Then I have a Windows10 gaming laptop and Flash sometimes struggle there.

All computers have Chrome and play flash equally "okay".

Why am I having such an issue with Firefox, so many different results? Is there something I can do for my BootCamp Windows10's Firefox to play as smooth as Firefox on the MacOS side??

So let me give some details, I am running Firefox 71.0 (64-bit) on my Mac and Windows10 PC ... however the Windows OS is running on BootCamp off the Mac. The Mac App of Firefox seems to give a much more pleasant experience playing flash games like Alpha Penguin but the Windows Program is extremely laggy. Is there any reason why? Both OSes are using the same hardware to it's max capabilities. I'd also like to mention that I have an older version of Firefox on my daily solo Windows 8.1 machine and it's lower specked and Flash games like Alpha Penguin play pretty well(there are some lag areas but not as much as my BootCamp situation) but when using a newer version of Firefox on that Win8.1 machine Flash seems to be as equally as bad as the BootCamp Windows10. Then I have a Windows10 gaming laptop and Flash sometimes struggle there. All computers have Chrome and play flash equally "okay". Why am I having such an issue with Firefox, so many different results? Is there something I can do for my BootCamp Windows10's Firefox to play as smooth as Firefox on the MacOS side??

All Replies (5)

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There are 3 versions of Flash.

Firefox uses the NPAPI version of Flash; IE uses the ActiveX version; and almost all other browsers use the PPAPI version of Flash - Chrome, Edge, Safari, & Opera use the PPAPI version. Adobe makes them all, some are more equal that others. But hey, that's beating an almost dead horse; Flash ain't gonna be around for much more than a year, if that long.

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So the MacOS version of Firefox is using NPAPI? That doesn't completely explain why flash runs the best on my Mac with Firefox then anywhere else(even with the BootCamp of Windows, Firefox should be taking advantage of the same hardware).

I wanna get flash to fun smoothly before the downloads disappear lol

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For firefox, both the MacOS version and Windows (and Linux) version use NPAPI. NPAPI was built around netscape plugins to give you an idea of how old flash is and why it's about to be out the door. Mozilla looks for plugins in the MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH variable on all three OS's. In Windows, I think a default location is something like %APPDATA%/mozilla/plugins (I don't use windows do I may be wrong, you can check by echoing the variable in the command prompt.) It's just an object called libflashplayer.so and should be the same plugin that runs flash for firefox on both MacOS and windows. Chrome uses "pepper flash" from the PPAPI release of adobe flash. I don't use chrome so I'm not sure where it points to for plugins. There may be other factors as to why NPAPI flash is faster for you on MacOS than windows, but there is really a conglomerate of different reasons so I can't pin point why without much more info.

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One thing you can do to see if it's PURELY the computer / OS that's causing a speed difference is to run local swf files on the computer via the projector version of flash: https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html .

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It is possible that the Windows Flash version that runs via Bootcamp isn't able to use hardware acceleration like the other versions (Mac native and Windows native) likely do.