Google will disable classic extensions in Chrome in the coming months
Google published an update on the deprecation timeline of so-called Manifest V2 extensions in the Chrome web browser. Starting this June, Chrome will inform users with classic extensions about the deprecation.
Manifests are rulesets for extensions. They define the capabilities of extensions. When Google published the initial Manifest V3 draft, it was criticized heavily for it.
This initial draft had significant impact on content blockers, privacy extensions, and many other extension types. Many called it the end of adblockers in Chrome because of that. In the years that followed, Google postponed the introduction and updated the draft several times to address some of these concerns.
Despite all the changes, Manifest V3 is still limiting certain capabilities. The developer of uBlock Origin listed some of these on GitHub. According to the information, current uBlock Origin capabilities such as dynamic filtering, certain per-site switches, or regex-based filters are not supported by Manifest V3.
The release of uBlock Origin Minus highlights this. It is a Manifest V3 extension, but limited in comparison to the Manifest V2-based uBlock Origin.
Google's Manifest V2 deprecation timeline
Google plans to show a banner to Chrome users who run Manifest V2 extensions in their browser. This starts on June 3 for development editions -- Beta, Dev, and Canary -- of the browser.
Manifest V2 extensions that have the Feature badge will lose that badge on that day.
The extensions management page in Chrome lists the soon-unsupported extensions. It provides a link to read up on the change and "find alternative" buttons next to each extension.
Then, in the months that follow, Manifest V2 extensions will be disabled automatically by Chrome. Google says that users may enable the extensions again for a short period of time. This option will be removed eventually, leaving users with no option to re-enable their extensions.
The change rolls out to development builds first, but in the coming months, will also hit Chrome Stable users.
Enterprise customers get a one year extensions. They need to set the policy ExtensionManifestV2Availability for that. Google plans to deprecate the policy in June 2025.
Tip: set chrome://flags/#extension-manifest-v2-deprecation-warning to Enabled in Chrome to see which of the installed extensions still use Manifest V2.
Closing Words
Most Chromium-based browsers will follow Google. Some may extend support for Manifest V2 extensions, but in the end, it is likely that support will be dropped.
This leaves Firefox as an alternative, as it will continue to support Manifest V2 next to Manifest V3.
It is still unclear how many extensions are affected by Google's decision. Some cannot be upgraded to Manifest V3, at least not without introducing limitations or removing features.
Extensions that are no longer maintained may also stop working, provided that they have not been updated to Manifest V3.
All in all, content blockers will no longer be as effective as they were previously in Chromium-based browsers. The majority of users may not notice the change. Content blockers continue to work, but with limitations.
Integrated content blockers continue to work. This is the case for Brave, Vivaldi, or Opera, which all include options to block ads and tracking without installation of extensions.
This is what Brave is going to do about it. I don’t totally agree with what they say, but it’s partially true the ‘fears’ about how inferior MV3 is, just looking at the big picture, the DNR rule limits is not exactly the biggest issue, just part but it shouldn’t affect ‘most people’.
https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
Even if browser like Opera, vivaldi or even brave plan to keep supporting Manifest v2 extensions then that is not good enough because nobody is hosting them so unless these Chromium based browsers are willing to do the bare minimum and create a repository for these extensions then there is no point in even puffing up your chest and saying I will not stand for this as a third party browser developer and it just goes to show how much say they have in anything. Google doesn’t care about anyone other than google.
Hosting is also one small part of the puzzle, then it is convincing extension developers to continue to develop for manifest v2 as opposed to manifest v3. We only have to look how that all went with the web extensions. Very few people stayed behind to continue to develop for XUL and even I am underwhelmed by the current offerings in XUL but its a nice and sad reminder to use Pale Moon and experience the absolute power and brilliance of XUL as its vastly superior to the weak web extensions system.
How can we keep people developing for chromium in manifest v2 when Pale Moon could not convince extensions developers to continue to work on their XUL extensions instead of web extensions or at all? And XUL was definitely worth fighting for if you ask me, Chrome is not. Resistance is futile at this point as far as staying it out on Chrome if you intend to enjoy the fullest experience of the extensions you once used aside from that you would have to move to a gecko based browser if the extension developer in question maintains an extension for firefox in the long term.
XUL rules!
Mozilla decided to abandon XUL and the majority of their userbase so they could support WebExtensions and Google Chrome add-ons… to try and pull in Chrome users, I guess. Didn’t really work out that way. After more than a decade of supporting Firefox, we mostly just departed.
Mozilla is no more trustworthy than Google.
Well, in my simple and “old” notebook both Ubuntu 24.04 and the Firefox snap (!) have manifest(ed) themselves and are working great…
I only have 4GB of ram and was condemned by W10.
Both Ubuntu and Firefox reduced ram usage and improved perfomance specially for music listenning as Ubuntu adopted Pipewire.
Chrome is getting bloated and stalls frequently…
It’s time for Firefox to attack!
Ubuntu and FF has no reduced ram usage it’s even more than W10.
If you can’t use W10 properly just don’t spread this ram “meme”.
You can test it in VM side by side with limited resources and W10 will win in performance and ram optimization.
be for real, virtualization means jack, try it both on bare metal and even a fresh win10 ltsc iot, you know, the most debloated official version, is SLOWER on an nvme ssd than ANY linux distro that I tested in the past week on a Sata SSD. The ram usage is not a meme, if a system cannot manage memory with default settings on a fresh PC, I don’t think that it’s a user issue. I’ve tested in both virtual machines and bare metal just an fyi for all these cases, as well as with many different ram amounts, windows 10 literally has a memory issue
Don’t go assuming you’ll be immune because you’re on Firefox. Mozilla has already stated they’re going to support Manifest V3. On top of that Mozilla makes the majority of it’s money from Google via a search engine deal that Google doesn’t even have to pay Mozilla since Firefox is 7% of the market. in 2021 83% of Mozilla’s money came from Google. If Google decided Mozilla needed to drop Manifest v2 support Mozilla would have 450 Million reasons to do it.
Firefox already said will support both manifest v2 and v3 so take your concern trolling away.
The rest of your post is the usual google fanboy fud.
When living in the boonies on low data, an older 32-Bit FF-51 with an older
uBlock-0 and a well maintained firewall is a solid secure solution.
An updated Palemoon 32-Bit with uBlock-O as a backup works quite well for ‘Heavy’ sites overloaded with nonsense.
The above keeps the OS running fast and cool, (Back to the Future Baby)
CCleaner Browser (Avast-browser-copy) claims to block ads and tracking. Comodo Dragon also claims this. A possible solution, anybody experience?
Brave is better than those both.
Brave can be better, but I dont want a browser with a cryptocurrency-wallet integrated.
There is no need to use its cryptocurrency wallet at all. I have never did.
I do not want to do financial tasks with a browser which contains a cryptocurrency-wallet. Even if it is diabled or not used.
I always have had at least 2 different browsers in case one crashes (e.g. at an update).
I found a way to have a rescue, at all Chromium browsers removed, when Firefox crashes. Install Firefox-esr in portable mode. Then I have 2 “different” Firefox-browsers, managed by the code-source, so quickly updated if necessary. Alas the portable version is not found by Spywareblaster and Ccleaner. And this trick, both Firefox and Firefox-esr, cannot be applied in Linux, so only in Windows.
Do you understand what a cryptocurrency is, let alone what a crypto wallet is? It doesn’t seem like you do. If you don’t want to use it then disable it, the feature is completely optional and having it available (even if you were to keep it enabled and not use it) will not affect or impact any of your “financial tasks” in any way. Not sure what it is you’re not getting here.
It is possible,without any trick, to have both FF and FF-ESR installed and working in MX-KDE-Linux (installed from the MX-software-repository).
Mullvad is based on FF-ESR, probably also runs beside FF, in any Linux-distro.
Can anyone reveal their source for these stats?
Whilst I am not surprised that Chrome users do not use extension because that somehow is basically a perfectly good indicator of how stupid they are but I doubt the numbers are as high as 80% – 90% of users. Not all of them are that ignorant but one has to also consider if these stats are compiled in a valid manner, for example is that a cross platform stat because then you’d have to consider that Google Chrome or many of its underling browser do not support extensions on Mobile devices so whilst it may be true that they do not use extensions then is it by choice?
Given that Chrome comes preinstalled on many phones then I would wager that this is largely where this stat is coming from much to the same as safari. It’s not a wildly great browser it is that it is foisted upon people and comes preinstalled and foisted upon users on all apple related products and furthermore their rubbish fashionista phones do not really support or truly allow any sort of browser beyond safari anyway.
I would also draw some sort of skepticism towards these garbage stat counters as Firefox users are probably spoofing their user agent/browser or running some higher level of security to obfuscate their identification or blocking these scripts/web bugs to gather this information too.
I still have no doubt people will settle with whatever they can get when it comes to chrome users. I will be shocked if 20% of users would move over to firefox at this stage.
Last I checked uBlock Origin was not maintained for Pale Moon. Somebody did start hacking together some sort of more up to date version but it was far from perfect. Justoff has been gone since 2022. I vaguely recall someone mentioning that he resided in Ukraine so who knows of his fate. I hope he is alive and well though.
In terms of the future fate for Google and uBo then who knows. Will Raymond continue to develop it for Chromium or will he just drop it?
On one hand you just want to keep trying to stick it to Google but on the other hand it will be a huge uphill battle, require a lot of differing work to maintain whilst not being on parity with the Firefox version which puts it even further behind than what it already was before.
I’d imagine it would be easier to drop support for Chromium altogether and just focus on the Firefox version and maybe if he feels the need to continue to work on the Pale Moon version if he so desires. Whatever he decides I wish him and all extension developers well.
As much as a lot of this discussion centers around uBo there are many other extensions at risk here and many that will cease to exist as was the case with many extensions when Mozilla moved to webextensions and if some developers did continue development many of them accepted that their extension will be a watered down version of what they once developed. Some just decided not to compromise the ideals of their project, some also held on to some BS lies that was peddled by mozilla that they would work with extension developers to transition to webextensions which never really came. Mozilla barely ever did anything to improve webextensions.
Brave has the built-in ad-blocker, it works on mobile and has good pop-up blocking. I don’t even need uBlock Origin on desktop, bit I keep it to see what happens when it stops working.
The other solution is AdGuard desktop program or one you install on your router and don’t need and ad-blocker anymore.
Scre the dead POS Firefox, it won’t get any market share out of this stunt.
Looks like the Google fanboys are coping hard.
Even if Firesux is the last browser in the world, I would still not use it. No place for this woke, hypocritical, outdated trash on my storage units. I’d rather not use the internet at all. But then again, all signs are pointing to Firesux’ continuing demise, only tinfoil hat wearing nolifer losers are still using it, believing they are fighting some righteous crusade about internet freedom or whatever, but if they ever go outside in the real world, they will see no normal person cares about any of this crap.
Go back to 1933.
Wow, you covered almost all the google fanboy talking points. You just forgot to mention Google search engine deal, which all the other browsers have also.
Google like Jesus may be your Lord but there are other people in this world that believe in other Lords instead and that is perfectly fine but by all means use what you want.
It doesn’t matter what anyone believes in as long as you’re a good person.
I would assume that this is a case of, like what I like or you go to hell kind of thing.
@JESUS_IS_LORD why are you triggered chud?
lol brave
Best comment in this thread.
> The other solution is AdGuard desktop program or one you install on your router and don’t need and ad-blocker anymore.
The gross thing was Mozilla scheming to preempt those kind of countermeasures too by pioneering DoH and refusing to work with AdGuard in an effective manner or even fix DoH to be effectively private for years, the whole grift was just oviously wrong.
enjoy your crypto miner
Firefox just said they’re not moving to mv3, how is that a stunt? Seems like the stunt is all on Google’s side, trying this deceptive ploy to kill the ad blockers.
I’m still everyday using Chrome v.70 with many Manifest v2 extensions.
Also I have installed Brave and Degoogled Cromium (portable version) and I’m still doing my job very well.
@samurai cat
There is not going to be a ‘full version’ or ublock origin for chome manifest v3, it is not going to be possible.
They would have to resort to some really dirty page injection techniques (and do the work in-page with js/webasm) to work around some of the coming limitations.
Somehow I predict that google knows that, so you’ll probably have to MITM yourself and run a proxy to inject ublock into the pages.
@others
don’t pin your hopes in Brave. Or any other chromium child, they will have to follow v3 manifest or become independent forks. Which likely won’t last long before going back to being chromium kids.
Even if Firefox outperforms Chrome and Bwwwave in terms of blocking speed and percentage:
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox]
The Manifest V3 version of uBlock Origin (uBlock Origin Lite) is also limited by default. The blocking mode needs to be raised to either Optimal or Complete to benefit from additional filtering abilities.
The problem is, if an admin wants to roll out uBOL to their fleet, the Group Policy settings are limited:
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home#admin-policies
This means they will not be able to configure the default blocking mode to Optimal or Complete.
Brave-specific Group Policy settings are also limited, however at least the default Brave Shields setup has full filtering abilities out-of-the-box and uses the default uBlock Origin Manifest V2 lists.
Chromium browsers are the only ones that work perfectly with ID cards out of the box, no config needed, , even in Linux they all run like a charm. Firefox is not an easy alternative to them due the several requirements and the special configuration it needs to run properly. I mainly use FF to open some official XFA PDFs, and to download some documents and videos with its good extensions. Firefox has good extensions for mosly every purpose you can imagine. Thanks to @Tom Hawack and his amount of FF extensions. Thanks @Martin for the article! :]
(Pale Moon user grabbing pop-corn)
Ublock Origin lite, not minus
Remark the manifest V3 version of Ublock Origin is Ublock Origin Lite, not ‘minus’
Some of the people writing here are absolutely delusional once again. Fact is, a lot of Chrome and Edge users either don’t know that adblockers even exist or don’t care. Furthermore, Manifest V3 is set to dramatically increase extension security by design. Currently, using the webRequest API, extensions can monitor and potentially redirect(!) traffic occurring in the browser. Adblockers like uBlock Origin use that capability for good, but you know who also uses this? The vast majority of malware extensions out there, that’s right. It’s an invitation for phishing, spyware, and other scams.
Ultimately this will reduce the amount of damage that can be done, the extension ecosystem will become unattractive for malware devs. The only openly user-hostile change I can see here is the arbitrary rule limit, this is obviously aimed at harming adblockers and I criticize it as such. However the general idea of Manifest V3, what it aims to do, is necessary and long overdue.
Ultimately I won’t let my adblocking be castrated by Google, by continuing to use Brave and its internal adblocker, which is not an extension and is thus unaffected by these changes.
The people who think that Firefox will rise up again based on this are delusional, not enough people care that much and there are other alternatives floating around as well. I see very small gains here for Firefox, at most.
@Iron Heart
Yeaaaa…because it’s all the extensions zero day vulnerabilities Chrome keeps patching 50 times per month…
Ok, it’s of course good they get patched, but seeing people defend a privacy nightmare browser by an advertising company is hilarious. Manifest v3 has ZERO (see what I did there) to do with anybody’s security, the fact that there might be some security improvements was just a fluke that got lifted to the forefront as a smokescreen. Google is basically putting a bucket over your head and calls it a helmet. Comes in handy, in case you might slip on a Google banana.
Google also doesn’t say a word about the fact that browser adblockers are the best security defense from all the malware-spreading websites out there. Websites that Google search is serving all of us, I might add. Google isn’t the condom. Google is the VD.
Google is evil, end of story.
@Bobo, I couldn’t agree more, and when you write that “Google is evil, end of story.” I’d even dare say it’s worse than that : it’s evil presenting itself as goodness.
Ohhh it is done for our “””security”””
*honks red nose*
Google really wants to ruin the internet. RIP Chromium based browsers. Back to Firefox!
Pues hace tiempo que huso Firefox y funciona muy bien.Tambien Yandex funciona muy bien.
Brave may be an option but yeah, good old FF may be set for a comeback.
If the full version of uBlock Origin isn’t ready for Manifest V3 by then, switching to Brave Browser would be the best choice for most people.
Hope dropping Manifest V2 causes Chrome marketshare to plummet by at least 50% and Brave Browser gains that marketshare.
Its high time people start considering de-google their life: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqmbcbI8U55EfYUVdZfjrfyJyNHD-Bly8
“Hope dropping Manifest V2 causes Chrome marketshare to plummet by at least 50% and Brave Browser gains that marketshare.”
If Chrome goes away, then so do Chromium clones like Brave.
> talks about de-googling
> posts youtube link
> talks about de-googling
> promotes Google Chrome clone Brave
I know entirely too many people who use Chrome without any sort of adblock. I actually installed ublock origin for my sister and she removed it. She said she couldn’t pay bills with it enabled. Uhhhh… what? She would rather not have it so now she just complains about the ads and I don’t listen anymore.
People are so unaware it’s not even funny. All this could have been avoided had she known she can allow her non-working site by just clicking the ublock origin icon.. In a related story, a friends mom stopped using Firefox with Adblock Plus my friend installed for her on his holiday visit home, because “It’s S**T!!! It doesn’t show Facebook correctly!!!!!” So she victoriously installed Chrome and now her Facebook WORKS! Yes, there are ads all over the place but Facebook, the holy cow and saviour of all things, WORKS!
I was talking to her on the phone, asking what she did when Facebook stopped working. The conversation didn’t offer any clues at first, she was 100% sure she had nothing to do with all of this. Then we talked about how Facebook has changed over the years. She mentioned that people have also changed, and especially her tolerance for people on Facebook has gone to zero so she just blocks anyone that writes something she doesn’t agree on. THAT was the clue. Here’s what she did: when someone wrote something she didn’t agree on, she right-clicked and chose BLOCK. Turns out the “BLOCK”-bit was Adblock Plus element blocker that was sitting in the context menu just waiting for an oblivious user to reek havoc. Yeah, Facebook didn’t “work” because she was blocking her newsfeed, her gallery comments etc etc like a blind chicken with a shotgun.
“I didn’t do anything!!!! FIREFOX IS S**T!!!!!!!!!” ……..
Moral of the story: Don’t install things without explaining how they work. Keep the explaining part VERY simple, and hide everything that could turn out to be a landmine just waiting to be stepped on.
How do I check if any of my extensions are going to be depreciated on Brave? So far, Brave extension page does not list warnings.
I would speculate that they will just enable the enterprise flag which allows Manifest V2 extensions to run until June 2025. It costs them nothing and makes users happy. The actual code related to Manifest V2 won’t be removed until mid-next year.
There is a subset of Google fanatics that are much like political morons that will find excuses to support garbage even to their own detriment. You cannot also deny that Google Chrome is popular and therefore attracts the masses and the mass boneheaded audience has absolutely no idea what is going, either they will not notice the differences or they will hassle a friend or family member to “fix” it for them and then when presented with the solution will complain that they miss their old browser for the most asinine reason.
This will go down much the same way as when Mozilla decided to go with webextensions. There will be suckers that will tell you that this was for the best and it will make the browser even more powerful or something stupid such as that.
Mozilla wants to capitalize on this Manifest v3 stupidity but are going to fall short because they have not done enough to lure away users up until now. They might have woken up more recently a little but its too little, too late too.
I still believe that Mozilla is the better choice but that is just my opinion.
Everyone is entitled to use what they like but don’t expect to ever have your interests at heart when it comes to anything belonging to brands such as Google. It’s time we stop giving google a pass and lump them in with Meta and other social media.
Not affected personally by Google disabling classic extensions in Chrome, given I avoid Google, widely. When it comes to the browser, it’s Firefox.
Good opportunity to remind the importance of not relying only on a browser’s content blocker but as well and before all on system-wide blacklists.
Manifest V3 or when the advertisement business ties the user’s fists after having punched him.
As there are precisely 0 reasons you need to use Chrome (or Edge, which is Chromium based), a non issue. Just use Firefox. F#ck Google all the way hard.
Anyone who says “It doesn’t do ‘x’ as well as Chrome’ has clearly not used FF in a decade.
So much for private non public, power for profit structures. They are at the end completely unusable. They are also inherent undemocratic and totalitarian non participative. Most laws by the state that should give us rights and protects the interests of societies and individuals are written by for profit corporations, lobbyists and interests and set up with way to much money. They are getting nastier by the day and the appetite for ever more money, power, influence is endless and corrupts everything at the end… what for example does Microsoft as the owner of Github know it should not, simply by analysing what projects and people take part in there? Besides that, the internet would be unusable without UBO because commercial interests corrupt almost every page we see.
Going to be pretty interersting to see how many chromium-based users are suddenly scrambling to get back onto Firefox this summer. I’ll bet it’s a lot of people.
Browsers where full versions of uBlock Origin should be continuing to work as usual after July:
Firefox & forks (GNU’s Icecat & Abrowser, Librewolf, Mullvad, Tor Browser, Floorp, Waterfox)
Pale Moon & Basilisk
Seamonkey
Has anyone heard what will happen to NoScript on chromium-based browsers? That could be a world of hurt if they are losing both uBlock and NoScript.
@Andy Prough
I wouldn’t count any older Firefox deriviatives like Pale Moon or SeaMonkey. They use outdated Gecko engines that uBO doesn’t fully support.
People hate Brave for what they’ve done in the past, but they have a built-in adblocker that is integrated into the browser and supports roughly all of the adblocking syntax rules that uBO and Adguard uses. So like Iron Heart mentioned, Brave is a bit immune to this.
@Andy Prough
> I’ll bet it’s a lot of people.
I’ll bet not many, outside of your day dreams anyway. This will not substantially decrease adblocking even on Chromium. At the end of the day, if you are determined you can switch to a Chromium-based browser with built-in adblocker, like Brave, and carry on with your day as before, still having all the advantages of Chrome.
The Firefox users are a very loud vocal minority, but I don’t see the graph moving there according to Mozilla’s figures, despite the fanboys aggressively drumming up the security enhancement that is Manifest V3 as if it means the end of adblocking in Chromium, which despite their misinfo, it does not.
That’s exactly what needs to happen: a mass migration to Firefox or one of its forks. Users need to do that as a means of letting Google know what they think of this giant corporation’s behaviour. It’s tantamount to exerting control of users lives.
Why should we allow ourselves to bombarded with ads every time we go online? It’s getting beyond a joke now. I use Floorp myself most of the time, but it doesn’t work well with online banking. Fortunately I can switch to Firefox for that purpose. Both support UBO which does a fine job of removing ad banners from my sight.
But users who choose to stick with Google Chrome or any of its forks once Manifest v3 comes into play seriously need to get their heads examined.
>”Why should we allow ourselves to bombarded with ads every time we go online?”
We shouldn’t, as allowing ads opens your browser up to significant security risks via hacked js.
The amount of people I see out in the wild that don’t even use any extensions, I’ll bet only a fraction of a fraction use both ublock & noscript.
True.
But once they get to see all those annoying ads, they might cry “help”!
I completely agree with Bruh. I read that 80%/90% of people do not use any extensions. I would not be surprised if Chrome decides to drop extension support.
“I read that 80%/90% of people do not use any extensions.”
Source – Trust me bro
>”read that 80%/90% of people do not use any extensions”
I don’t think Google can afford to lose 20% of chrome users. That would lose them a lot of ad money.