Though this prevents Flash videos from loading and slowing your system, it still tells the page that you have Flash installed, and you get the Flash version of that video. Some people may think that a Safari extension such as ClickToPlugin (like ClickToFlash) would be an easier solution. If you still need to use Flash for any reason, Gruber recommends using Google's Chrome for those sites. You should now be served HTML5 videos on sites that have that option.
If you would like the User Agent Profile to remain consistent, open Terminal and enter the following command:ĭefaults write CustomUserAgent "'Mozilla/5.0 (iPad U CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10'" This will cause your current session to render just as it would on an iPad (running iOS 3.2.2).
Check the box to enable the Develop menu.Ĭlick on the new Develop menu in the Safari menu bar and select User Agent > Mobile Safari 3.2.2 - iPad. To activate the Develop menu in Safari, navigate to the Safari menu bar, click Safari > Preferences, and choose the Advanced tab.
You can check how a site may render using the Develop menu and choosing a User Agent Profile for Mobile Safari. To disable Flash in Safari and browse using the iPad version of Mobile Safari, follow these directions: That could cause the site to redirect to their mobile version, as if you were using an iPad. If you apply this hack, you may lose some functionality.Īnother possible side effect of this process is sites that think your browser is Mobile Safari. Keep in mind that not all sites that serve videos have an HTML5 version. John Gruber ( Daring Fireball) provides a great tip for disabling Flash Player in Safari ( edited by crarko on ), which forces Web sites to serve HTML5 videos (when available). With the rise of HTML5 vying for video supremacy on the Web, workarounds for disabling Flash Player continue to pop up, allowing users to get a smoother, faster video-viewing experience online.