How to Enable Flash on The Kindle Fire

Evan Gower November 27, 2019

Amazon’s Fire tablet range have a number of things going for them. They’re cheap, have decent battery life, and are regularly upgraded and updated, with new models being released pretty much every year. However, they’re somewhat similar to Apple’s iPads. By default, they’re quite closed off. Functionality that you might expect or even take for granted on other tablets running an Android-based operating system, need to be installed manually on a Fire tablet.

Despite a growing number of security concerns, Adobe’s Flash software has been an integral part of a huge number of websites for many years. In fact, these concerns have led Adobe to announce the end of support for the program in 2020. Even so, to get the best out of many of the sites currently online, having Flash working properly is an absolute must. In this article, we’ll run you through what you need to do to get Flash installed on your Amazon Fire Tablet.

Enable Apps from Unknown Sources

To be able to install any sort of app or service on your device that isn’t provided specifically by Amazon, you’ll need to change a setting to allow apps from unknown sources on your tablet. Here are the steps you’ll need to follow to enable this setting:

Power up or wake your tablet, and go to the home screen.
Drag down the quick action toolbar from the top of your device’s screen.
Tap on the cog shaped Settings button.
Tap on Security & Privacy
Tap on the toggle to the right of Apps from Unknown Sources, so that the toggle is set to the right (the on position).

Install Adobe Flash, and a Web Browser That Can Use It

As mentioned above, there are some concerns as to the security of Flash player, which is why it’s not installed on Amazon’s user-friendly set of tablets. They’re so against the idea of people having Flash on their tablets, in fact, that the inbuilt web browser that comes with Amazon Fire tablets, Silk Browser, doesn’t actually support Flash even if you have it installed.

This means that in order to view websites that have Flash-based content, you’ll have to also install an alternative browser onto your device. Our suggestion is either Dolphin Browser, or Opera Mobile, both of which are available from Google Play Store, if you’ve downloaded and installed it on your tablet. Otherwise, you can follow our instructions to download and install Dolphin along with Flash.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to get both Flash, and Dolphin, working on your tablet:

Go to your tablet’s home screen.
Tap on the Silk Browser app’s icon.
To download Flash, tap on this link, or paste it into the browser’s address bar: http://rawapk.com/flash-player-apk-download/.
Scroll down and tap on the blue Download Flash Player APK button.
To download Dolphin Browser, tap on this link, or paste it to your browser’s address bar: https://rawapk.com/dolphin-browser-apk-download/.
Scroll down and tap on the blue Download Dolphin Browser APK button.
Go back to your device’s home screen.
Tap on the Docs app.
Tap on Local Storage.
Tap on Downloads.
Tap on the Flash APK, and then tap on Install to the bottom right of the screen. When the installation is completed, tap on Done.
Follow the same process for the Dolphin Browser APK, if you want to install it on your tablet.

You should now have both Flash and a browser capable of using it installed onto your Amazon Fire tablet.

dolphin

Enabling Flash in Dolphin Browser

Finally, you’ll need to make sure that your shiny new browser is set up to enable Flash content, otherwise, it will still seem like you don’t actually have Flash installed. Here’s how to do it:

Go to your tablet’s home screen.
Tap on the Dolphin Browser app icon.
Swipe left to get through the introduction.
Tap on the cog shaped menu icon to the bottom right of the screen.
Tap on Settings.
Tap on User Agent.
Tap on Desktop (the browser works much better in this mode, and allows you to see the normal desktop versions of websites rather than the cut-down mobile ones).
Tap on Web Content.
Tap on Off to the right of Flash Player.
Tap on Always On (or On demand if you want a bit more control over your security).

Your Dolphin browser app should now be ready to view any Flash Player content on your Fire tablet.

Flash in the Pan

Even though Flash is pretty quickly going out of style in favor of more modern and secure alternatives, the web is a massive place with many sites that aren’t based on the most recent infrastructure. By enabling Flash on your Amazon Fire tablet, you’re making sure that you can see all the websites that use it in the way they were intended to be seen.

If you have any other Flash enabled browsers that you prefer to use over Dolphin, why not share them with us in the comments section below?