.swf files
.swf file
Shockwave Flash Movie
A Flash animation or game — the plugin that ran these was killed off at the end of 2020.
What opens a .swf file
- Windows
- Ruffle, Flashpoint Archive
- macOS
- Ruffle, Flashpoint Archive
- Linux
- Ruffle, Flashpoint Archive
- In a browser
- Ruffle (browser extension)
What a .swf file is
SWF held the vector animations, browser games and interactive banners that defined the web from 1996 to about 2015. Adobe ended Flash Player on 31 December 2020 and added code to block remaining installs, so nothing official plays these any more. The open-source Ruffle emulator runs a large share of older SWF content safely, and the Flashpoint archive preserves thousands of games with their own player.
Converting it
A .swf file is commonly converted to .mp4, .gif or .html5. It is a binary format, so a text editor will show unreadable characters rather than its contents.
Details
- Extension
- .swf
- Full name
- Shockwave Flash Movie
- Category
- Video
- MIME type
- application/vnd.adobe.flash.movie
- Created by
- Macromedia / Adobe
- Format
- Binary
Common questions
- How do I open a .swf file?
- On Windows use Ruffle; on macOS use Ruffle; on Linux use Ruffle. A Flash animation or game — the plugin that ran these was killed off at the end of 2020.
- What is a .swf file?
- Shockwave Flash Movie. SWF held the vector animations, browser games and interactive banners that defined the web from 1996 to about 2015. Adobe ended Flash Player on 31 December 2020 and added code to block remaining installs, so nothing official plays these any more.
- Can I convert a .swf file?
- Yes. It is usually converted to .mp4, .gif or .html5, either by exporting from one of the programs listed above or with a format converter.
Related pages
- .mp4 — MPEG-4 Part 14 Video The default video container for phones, cameras, streaming and everything else.
- .mov — QuickTime Movie Apple's video container — what an iPhone records and what Final Cut works in.
- .mkv — Matroska Video An open container that holds any codec plus multiple audio tracks and subtitles.
- .avi — Audio Video Interleave Microsoft's 1992 video container, still common in old archives and camcorder foo
- .srt — SubRip Subtitle The plain-text subtitle format almost every player understands.
- .webm — WebM Video A royalty-free video container built for the web, based on Matroska.
- .ts — MPEG Transport Stream The broadcast and streaming video segment format — also, confusingly, the TypeSc
- .wmv — Windows Media Video Microsoft's legacy video format from the Windows XP era.
- .mpg — MPEG-1 / MPEG-2 Video The original MPEG video file, from Video CDs, DVDs and old digital cameras.
- .m4v — iTunes Video Apple's MP4 variant, used for films and TV episodes bought from iTunes.
- .vtt — WebVTT Caption The W3C caption format HTML5 video uses, essentially SRT with a header and styli
- .mts — AVCHD Video The clip format written by Sony, Panasonic and Canon camcorders.
Sources
- Media Types Registry — IANA
- Official vendor product documentation — At One Place