OSX : Bash Flash

Why use BashFlash ?

• The Adobe Flash Player doesn’t work very well on OS X. It can easily use up to 70% CPU when playing a video and uses a lot of memory when running.
• Flash automatically starts in web pages that have flash content in them. Since almost every website has a Flash component, or has Flash animated ads, or entire content systems contained in Flash, you can’t get rid of it.
• Once the plugin has started, it burns CPU and Memory even when it isn’t being used.
• Most network nerds have twenty or more web pages open at a time. Typically, more than half of these pages will have flash content running and this will burn a lot of CPU.
• The Flash Plugin is a major factor in running down your battery since it burns so much CPU and memory.
• Even if you are using a Flash Blocking plugin for Safari ClickToFlashor Firefox FlashBlock, once you start Flash for a page, the Flash plugin doesn’t always close and tidy itself up. It sits there burning CPU and Memory – this is the difference between a flash blocker and flash killer.

This is the steady state CPU burn for Flash when there is no flash running.

Wasted CPU and Memory for Flash.(Click for a full size image)

Playing Some Flash

Here I am running a single Youtube video for single flash applet. There are no flash ads or any other instances at this time. As you can see, a single Youtube video is burning 40% of CPU time on Core 2 Duo at 2.93Ghz. Impressively wasteful and not helpful when you are burning CPU in a GNS3 simulation. [Note that H264 video uses less than 5% CPU for the same video]

Caption Text.(Click for a full size image)

It’s not unusual for some Flash to show CPU burn up to 75% on my machine when I have many web pages open, and the ads are animating and burning a lot of CPU

Using Bash Flash

When the BashFlash Icon in the Menu Bar is DARK / BLACK then then the Flash plugin is running.

So you want to kill Flash and get your CPU back.

And the Menu Icon for Bash Flash will show as grey to indicate that Flash is not running.

The Etherealmind View

For whatever reason, the Adobe Flash technology doesn’t run well on the OS X platform. Because so many web pages use flash for ads or animated graphics then this applet can easily burn thirty or forty percent of your CPU even when you aren’t using it. This runs your battery down quickly and steals CPU from more important applications.

Therefore this is an important addition to your OS X system. Make a point of not using flash or blocking flash. When you must, this tool gives you the ability to easily kill the Flash plugin.

For example, by visiting http://youtube.com/HTML5 you can set a cookie that signals you want to receive the video in H264 format.

You should combine this tool with the Click to Flash plugin for Safari, FlashBlock for Firefox. Camino has a preference to block flash by default and requires no plugin.

My Menu bar looks like this

This is one of a series of articles that look at my Menu Bar after colleague asked what software I am using.

Caption Text.(Click for a full size image)