Replacing a Red5 or Flash chat with WebRTC
Thousands of sites ran a Flash webcam chat on a Red5 server. Since browsers dropped Flash, those chats show an empty box. Here’s what changed and how to get a working chat back.
Why your Flash chat stopped working
Adobe ended Flash Player on 31 December 2020 and blocked Flash content from running in January 2021. Every major browser removed the plugin. A chat built in Flash or Flex – like the original Red5 Chat – can no longer load, whatever the server does.
The Red5 server itself was never the problem. Red5 is still an open source Java media server, and it can keep serving RTMP streams. What disappeared is the client in the browser.
What replaced Flash: WebRTC
WebRTC is built into every modern browser, on desktop and mobile. It gives web pages access to the camera and microphone, with no plugin, and encrypts audio and video by default. Every serious webcam chat today uses it.
- No installation – it works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge, including on iPhone and Android.
- Lower latency than RTMP, which matters for conversation.
- Encrypted by design – media travels over DTLS-SRTP.
Option 1: rebuild it yourself
If you have developers and a server, you can rebuild the chat on an open source WebRTC media server such as Janus, mediasoup, LiveKit or Jitsi. You will also need a TURN server (for example coturn) for users behind strict networks, a signalling server for messages, and the user features your old chat had: rooms, private messages, moderation.
The commercial edition of Red5, Red5 Pro, also supports WebRTC if you want to stay in the Red5 ecosystem.
Option 2: use a hosted chat
If you want your community back quickly, a hosted chat is faster. Dialogoo and HTML5-Chat were built by the team behind Red5 Chat and keep its features: multi-webcam rooms, private messages, who’s watching, kick and ban, bad-words filter, custom design. You paste one line of code and the old empty box becomes a working chat.
Migration checklist
- List the features your users actually used in the old chat.
- Export your user list if your old chat had registered members, so they can log in to the new one.
- Make sure your site runs on HTTPS – WebRTC requires it.
- Replace the Flash object or embed tag with the new embed code.
- Redirect the old chat URLs to the new page so links and search rankings carry over.
- Tell your regulars: a short message on your home page brings them back.