How do I install the Silverlight plugin on Safari 12 to use Amazon Prime video?

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How do I install the Silverlight plugin on Safari 12 to use Amazon Prime video?

Safari 12 seems to have issues with a lot of options for installing and using plugins. I would like to continue using Safari, but if I cannot use it for watching videos, especially on Amazon Prime, I have no need for it. I would like to install MS Silverlight and have actually successfully downloaded it and installed it.

Am I missing something here?

How do I use Silverlight with Safari 12 when the Safari -> Preferences -> Security screen no longer has any options on plugins?

Many thanks.

New Airport Extreme-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Sep 24, 2018 5:04 AM

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Answer 1

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VikingOSX

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Sep 24, 2018 2:55 PM in response to nickfromkett

Microsoft ended development and support of Silverlight for the Mac, and any Safari browser, in late 2016. As you observed, Safari 12 has ended browser plug-in support, so it wouldn't matter if Silverlight were supported on the Mac, it would not work with Safari 12 anyway.

Either change to a browser that does support Silverlight, or investigate the availability of streaming HTML5 video from Amazon Prime.

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Answer 2

nickfromkett Author

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Sep 24, 2018 2:59 PM in response to VikingOSX

It works fine on AppleTV, but it is simply bad form to play political games with other computer vendors for software which works fine on some of their devices and not all. It limits the consumer even more.

I’ll use Chrime in my laptop. .

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Answer 3

Oct 10, 2018 7:32 AM in response to nickfromkett

Warning - Someone recommended reverting back to Safari 11 to allow Prime video to work - I tried this and it caused Safari to no longer recognize or accept my keychain password - or to sync keychain via iCloud - nearly lost all my keychain passwords!

Spent many hours with Apple support early this morning (they were not able to solve this and escalated the problem to engineer status and scheduled a call-back etc) - they were very patient however (kudos) and concluded there were corrupted keychain identification? files - luckily, I resisted all advice to reset keychain and allowed software update (updating back to the future Safari 12) to fix the problem. In retrospect this solution seems obvious but it was anything but obvious when nothing worked right because of hundreds of keychain error messages blocking every action.

Silverlight will not help. Safari has now shifted to decoding HTML5 via hardware - which allows for 1080p resolution at streaming speeds on newer machines only. I've searched and searched and there is no work-around for Safari.

Best option at this time is to install and use Firefox or another compatible browser.

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Answer 4

nickfromkett Author

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9 points

Oct 10, 2018 7:36 AM in response to ethel corn

Thanks.

My solution was to use Chrome, which works just fine.

Apple is really doing themselves some harm with people on older systems using the latest OS X and Safari versions. Do they realize how many people use Amazon and other sites which require Silverlight? Fortunately, there are other browsers out there to use which seem to be faster and can do more than Safari. I might just do a complete switch to another browser, once I've tested each one on speed, security and compatibility.

Nick

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How do I install the Silverlight plugin on Safari 12 to use Amazon Prime video?

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