Frash brings Flash to iPhone Jailbreak

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

We've seen Frash, the Jailbreak port of Android Flash, on the iPad but now it's making its move over to iPhone courtesy of Comex who coded it and Grant Pannell who compiled it.

Ally is going to look at this more in depth later in the week, but if you're Jailbroken and you've just been dying to get some Flash on your iPhone, there's now an alpha for that.

I'll just note here, however, that I've turned the official Flash 10.1 mobile off on my Nexus One since it didn't really rock my world (maybe I'm just used to not having it?), and while they complain about Apple like whiny kids on a forced march, Adobe still hasn't shipped a working version of Flash for webOS or BlackBerry -- two platforms that really, really want it.

All that to highlight just how alpha and unofficial this Frash build is, and remind you to keep an eye on your resources. (Or check out Comex's tweet longer...]

Update: Ben Miller let us know that you can now go to his Cydia repo, repo.benm.at, to install Frash more easily.

[DigitalDJ.net, thanks everyone who sent this in]

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

29 Comments
  • Yes it's great!
  • Flash....a-ah.....saviour of the universe!
    Sorry but somebody had to say it.
  • finally...must say, the flash sites which work, work pretty well so far..no laggy scrolling with flash conntent etc....3gs
  • i was hoping for it to work on the ABC.COM website but no luck! i wonder what's ABC using in their site....
  • I'd like to hear more on why you turned flash off on the Nexus.
  • Just a note: Frash is not compatible with the iPod Touch. I was hoping that it would work so my son could play some Flash games on the iPod Touch. It didn't work.
  • I got this on my iPhone 4 and unistalled it 15 mins later.. Not worth it.. If You cant watch Flash streaming videos then there is really no point.. I dont care for flash browser content..
  • I can't find this in cydia or rock. Someone please help :)
  • repo.benm.at
    add that source in cydia then search. install then restart phone :)
  • This is very unstable. You have to install manually and it crashed safari on almost every site i check (gizmodo, lifehacker, digg). Good stuff just not primetime ready.
    Side note. You guys should check out Apperang. You can make money by installing apps. its a legit place, made $24 so far. . .http://www.apperang.com/Auth/signup.aspx?ReferralId=837
  • Thanks Daniel!
  • There are so many Repos its silly yet all these JB virgins know about is 1% of them because they were preloaded in Cydia. I think this is funny for some reason.
  • It works well...but yea kinda pointless till u can watch movies... dont care to watch adds in flash...
  • New Post: Benm.at adds Frash (Flash to repository, makes installation stupidly simple… http://goo.gl/fb/w2vWv
  • Isn't it true that once a device has been jailbroken then it wont be supported under warranty? I heard this from a friend but I don't know if he is just trying scare tactics or telling the truth.
  • Thanks for saying you can't watch streaming movies with it, saved me a download! I was excited too before I saw that, oh well :(
  • Wow I am impressed how well it works! No issues for me. For those complaining about annoying ads, you get a gray flash box you gotta click on before flash loads, so you only need to enable the box when you need it.
  • It's rather sad that Apple took the stance of "we don't want to play with you" rather than actually trying to work with Adobe to make Flash better. I guess they really didn't want the competition with their Apps market.
    Preventing the flash modules on a page from loading without approval sounds like a nice touch. The lack of video and iTouch support is a downer though. Here's hoping that gets fixed in the near future.
  • downloading now. we'll see. ;)
  • so am i reading this right that it is only ipad 3.2 and iOS4 compliant??
  • It still saddens me that Apple isn't going to pursue this. In the month that I've been using i4, this has been the one and only thing I've missed from my Android.
    Defiantly going to download this and give a try.
  • installed. didn't see point. Uninstalled
  • Seems to work pretty well but I think Flash is dead. The only things I've found to look at using it are either adverts within pages, sites that are heavily advert subsidised or website intro's with 'Skip to enter' buttons.
  • Flash is just that... a momentary glimmer of usability that quickly disappeared into a forgotten futility.
  • @Cj
    You deserve.a medal.
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  • I get the gray box that says "Flash" but when clicked on, it just says "Unexpected error".
  • I'll wait a couple weeks for the app to improve.
  • I spoke to @chpwn via Twitter an he said that Frash has not been released and any version that is out is unstable, incomplete, and illegal. He also warns us to stay away from beta version as they can have bad effects on your idevice.