[2] Gnash is available both as a standalone player for desktop computers and embedded devices, as well as a plugin for the browsers still supporting NPAPI.

The main developer's web site for Gnash is located on the Free Software Foundation's GNU Savannah project support server.

[10] Adobe only provides an outdated version (11.2) of its official player for Linux on IA-32 and an AMD64 developer preview release in a binary-only form.

[17] The goal of the Gnash developers is to be as compatible as possible with the proprietary player (including behavior on bad ActionScript code).

However, Gnash offers some special features not available in the Adobe player, such as the possibility to extend the ActionScript classes via shared libraries: sample extensions include MySQL support, file system access and more.

For security reasons the extension mechanism must be compiled-in explicitly and enabled via configuration files.

A Flashblock plugin can be installed by the user, turning on the Flash support on a case-by-case, as needed basis.

It will need to handle many thousands of simultaneous network connection, and support running on large Linux clusters.

[26] Gnash has successfully run on Microsoft Windows, Darwin (OS X), Irix, Solaris, BeOs, OS/2, and Haiku.

[31] As of March 2012, the lead developer reported donations were barely enough to pay for hosting the project on the web.

[33][34][35] Such generic clauses, however, may be against national anticompetition laws when used in normal software license agreements.