Quick Tip: How to Disable Flash in Opera Browser (and other plugin too)

I’m pretty sure some of us are actually get annoyed with Flash animations. While Firefox and Chrome have their own FlashBlock extensions, Opera Browser users don’t have the option to install extensions to the browser. However, in Opera Browser, you can actually block Flash (and other plugin) by enabling the ‘on demand plugin’ option. While this is not as inconvenience as using the FlashBlock extension where you get the extra functionalities such as the option to whilelist a site, this is better than nothing for Opera Browser users.

How to Enable On Demand Plugin in Opera Browser

1. Type opera:config in Opera’s address bar. Click the ‘User Prefs’ section and look for ‘Enable On Demand Plugin’ (1). Enable it.

Figure 1

2. Make sure you also enable the ‘Enable On Demand Plugin Placeholder’ (2) option so you can easily see if a webpage contains any plugin.

Figure 2: ‘Enable On Demand Plugin Placeholder’ enabled

Figure 3: ‘Enable On Demand Plugin Placeholder’ disabled

3. In case you need to enable a plugin temporarily, just click on the placeholder icon and the plugin will be enabled for you.

However, I do find sites where the Flash plugin is still getting enabled even when the on demand plugin is enabled and you didn’t clicked the placeholder icon. For example, channel pages on YouTube that have video embedded on the page. I guess this is a bug of Opera Browser itself. Still, you can use this method if you need to block Flash ads.

Related posts:

1. Opera Link, The Ultimate Synchronizing Service For Opera Browser
2. Opera Browser Mouse Gestures That You Might Not Know
3. Web Browser Memory Usage: Firefox vs Flock vs Internet Explorer vs Opera
4. Disabling Opera BitTorrent Download
5. Update Firefox and Opera Search Bar With Google’s New Favicon

Tags: Browser, Flash, Opera, Tips