Choose which Flash content to see with FlashControl for Chrome

While there are plenty of irritations to be found online, few are quite as annoying as Flash ads. Distracting animations, irritating music, applets expanding over content you’re trying to read -- it’s really no surprise that many people install ad blockers on a new PC before they do anything else.

Some ads will still penetrate your defenses, of course. And legitimate Flash content may occasionally be just as annoying as the worst adverts. To fully protect yourself, then, you’ll need a more general content filter, like the Chrome extension FlashControl.

Install the extension and Flash content will by default be blocked, just a square black placeholder where the applet used to be. This is obviously rather drastic, but if you decide you want to access a particular app, just clicking the placeholder should activate it.

An omnibox menu offers more options. If there are several applets you’d like to use on the current page, say, there’s no need to click each one in turn: selecting "Allow This Page" on the menu will activate all Flash content.

Alternatively, "Block This Page" turns Flash content off, while "+Whitelist" and "+Blacklist" options allow you to always allow (or block) Flash at particular pages.

And if you’re not quite happy with any of this, then a detailed Settings box provides plenty of useful configuration options. You can have the extension allow Flash by default, say; enable or disable the omnibox menu; highlight blocked Flash content in various ways, and even block Flash if the computer hasn’t been used for a while (perhaps useful in extending battery life).

Getting all this set up does require a little work, of course. FlashControl does its best to help, though, allowing you to sync its settings with your Google account, and import or export filters. And in general we found it lived up to its name, giving you significantly more control over the Flash content you’ll see on your favorite sites.