Google is killing its Swiffy tool for converting Flash files into HTML5 on July 1

Google today announced that it will discontinue Swiffy, a tool that people can use to convert .SWF Adobe Flash files into HTML5, on July 1. The Swiffy Flash extension will also stop working.

“We will continue to serve the Swiffy runtimes, so any file you convert before the sunset date will continue to play,” Danial Klimkin, representing Google’s AdWords application programming interface (API) team, wrote in a blog post.

Swiffy first became available 5 years ago, initially as a Google Labs product. At the time, the motivation was to make Flash animations work on devices that didn’t have Adobe Flash installed.

Microsoft, Apple, and other browser makers have taken steps to discourage the use of Flash across the Web in general and promote HTML5 instead. There are security, performance, and web development advantages that come with this shift.

Google, for its part, said in February that Flash display ads can’t be uploaded into Adwords or DoubleClick Digital Marketing starting on June 30, and Flash display ads won’t work in DoubleClick or the Google Display Network starting on January 2, 2017. And last year, Google began to automatically convert Flash ads to HTML5 last year.

Klimkin directed people to use Adobe Animate and Google Web Designer if they want to convert Flash SWF files into HTML5. And for playing Flash SWF files, Klimkin encouraged people to try Mozilla’s open source Shumway Flash virtual machine.