How to fix Chrome playing SWF files (prompts to download instead)

For the last couple months I?ve been having issues playing SWF files in Chrome on my Mac. Before the SWF would play when I drag and drop them into the browser, or right click and open them with Chrome. Instead, Chrome started prompting to download the SWF again ? very unhelpful.

After digging a ton I found the answer on Google Product Forums. At the bottom of the forum, user Francis Maniaci suggests the following:

Go to : chrome://flags/#prefer-html-over-flashSelect Disabled. Then click relaunch now.

According to him, this problem started in Chrome 56. This worked for me, and didn?t involve downloading additional software to make up for Chrome changing defaults.

EDIT: According to this reddit thread, it looks like prefer-html-over-flash has been removed from Chrome?s flags as of version 61. There?s a couple threads of issues about this change on the Chromium bug tracker, but none of them seem to offer any great solutions beyond making an html page that has the swf you are trying to play embedded.

Below in the comments there are some proposed solutions, but none are up to my standards. If you come up with something, please share it below as I?d like to get this working as well!

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