FlashSwitcher X

Utility for switching between Flash Player version -  developed my Matthew Wallace.

FlashSwitcher X 0.1 is developed to allow Flash and Flex developers to switch between versions of the Flash Player without having to uninstall and then reinstall the Flash Player. Most Developers use a Debugger version of the Flash Player but would also lilke to test newer Beta Versions of the player that may not have a debugger version. That is why I developed this work flow.

Installation – Download

  1. First I would completely uninstall Flash Player by going to adobe.com site and download the flash player uninstaller for the mac.
  2. Drag the flashplayers folder to the Internet Plug-Ins folder. This Folder is located in your /Library/Internet Plug-Ins
  3. Drag the FlashSwitcher X folder to the Scripts Folder.This folder is actually located in your /Library/Scripts
  4. Launch AppleScript Utility. When the Application opens you need to check off Enable GUI Scripting and also check off Show Script menu in menu bar and Show Computer Scripts.You may also need to enable some settings in the Universal Access controls for this to work properly
  5. Download and install the Flash Player that you use the most and reinstall. For me it would be Flash 9 Debugger.
  6. After you have installed Flash Player and you did steps 1-4 then you should see an “apple script” menu in the upper right of your tool bar. Click and navigate to the > FlashSwitcher X folder and then choose the version of the player you would like to switch to. Sometimes this fails but for the most part works. If it does fail the try running the command again.
  7. Finally, Installing different versions of the Flash Player are pretty straightforward but requiers a little bit of work on your part if you want to use more versions of the player than what I have included.

If you would like to add more Players to this work flow you would need to do the following.

Go into your /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayers directory and you would add new directories for the players that you would like to install. An example would be a directory called “7″ so that  you could add Flash Player 7.

Once you have that directory in place you will need to actually install Flash 7 on your computer. First Uninstall Flash Player again.

Then Install the player version that you are wanting to add. After installation you will go to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and you will find two files. Copy “Flash Player.plugin” and “flashplayer.xpt” to the new “7″ directory that you have created in the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayers directory.

After you have completed copying the files you will need to create a work flow that will enable the new player version. You will go into the /Library/Scripts/FlashSwitcher X directory and right click on one of the scripts and choose to open the script with “Automator”. Once you have opened the workflow in automator  you will need to do a Save As and save the file as a new workflow and name it the appropriate name so you know what version of Flash you will be switching to. For this example we would call it “Switch to Flash 7″.

After Renaming the file you just need to edit the work flow a bit to do what you would like.

The only thing you should have to edit would be the third box that says “Get Specified Finder Items”. Remove the files that are in that box. After you remove them you will add the two files that would be in your new Flash Player directory that you created called “7″. Once  you have added these files you need to save the workflow again and  you should be good to go.

/////// one final note ///////
In order for these scripts to work we are actually first removing two files from the
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins directory called “Flash Player.plugin” and flashplayer.xpt

If we do not first move these files to the trash the script will throw and error so from time to time you will need to empty your trash.

Please provide feedback. I would really like to know if any of you have success with this tool or if you run into any issues and if you are able to tweak and make this even better.

If this really helps you out please consider throwing me a buck or two.


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