Google starts killing Manifest V2 extensions, which includes popular ad-blockers

[videogamesm12]

For the past few years, Google has been doing everything they can to prevent people from protecting themselves against the company's at best indifference and at worst hostility towards the safety and privacy of those trying to browse the internet. Behind the scenes they have been undermining the capabilities of popular ad-blockers by deprecating support for Manifest V2, the foundation of many of them like (formerly) Adblock Plus and (currently) UBlock Origin which rely on some of its features to effectively block ads.

Google's plan started in January 2022 when they first removed the ability to upload new extensions using Manifest V2 to the Chrome Web Store. Over the next few years they began additional aggressive user-facing anti-ad blocker campaigns on other services like YouTube. However, in the background the threat of killing the foundation of most ad-blockers loomed and Google was very willing to play the waiting game, so they did. Their plan began to bear fruits as recently as June 2024 when the development, canary, and beta versions of Google Chrome started displaying alerts that extensions with Manifest V2 would no longer be supported and directed users to install alternatives that use the gimped Manifest V3. This change has now hit the mainstream stable version of the browser as the page documenting this phenomenon on the UBlock Origin wiki was created just yesterday and news articles about this have just sprung up on publications like Bleeping Computer.

Starting with Google Chrome 127, there will be a warning for uBlock Origin (uBO) in your chrome://extensions/ page. [...] This is the result of Manifest v2 support being deprecated in favor of Manifest v3.

According to Google's timeline for the deprecation of Manifest V2, "in the coming months" they will also soon be disabling these extensions by default (forcing you to either turn it back on manually or install a gimped alternative with Manifest V3) and eventually these extensions will just be disabled outright altogether with no way to turn them back on. They do not provide an exact timeframe for when these events are to occur, so it is best assumed that it's going to happen extremely soon as they plan to complete the massacre of Manifest V2 by the beginning of next year and this section is from 2 months ago.

June 3 2024: the Manifest V2 phase-out begins​

Starting on June 3 on the Chrome Beta, Dev and Canary channels, if users still have Manifest V2 extensions installed, some will start to see a warning banner when visiting their extension management page - chrome://extensions - informing them that some (Manifest V2) extensions they have installed will soon no longer be supported. At the same time, extensions with the Featured badge that are still using Manifest V2 will lose their badge.

This will be followed gradually in the coming months by the disabling of those extensions. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time after the extensions are disabled, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on, but over time, this toggle will go away as well.

Like any big launches, all these changes will begin in pre-stable channel builds of Chrome first – Chrome Beta, Dev, and Canary. The changes will be rolled out over the coming months to Chrome Stable, with the goal of completing the transition by the beginning of next year. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025.

See our May 2024 blog for more context.

If you use an ad-blocker or are planning to do so, now is the time to begin looking at your options for staying protected. Here is a breakdown:

• At the very maximum, you have until June 2025 to continue using Manifest V2 extensions on Google Chrome as this is when Manifest V2 also gets killed for enterprises. To be treated like a big enterprise company until then, you'll have set a certain setting to a specific value in your computer's registry to enable it. This is only a short-term solution intended to buy you extra time.
  
  
• Many browsers like Brave Browser and Supermium use modified versions of the Chromium engine as their foundations, so their reliability in the long-term is up for debate as the Chromium engine will continue to evolve and change. While Brave and Supermium have made a committment to continue supporting Manifest V2 for as long as they can, eventually they may not be able to maintain support as the Chromium engine changes more and more and introduces potentially breaking changes that they will have to continually work around.
  
  
• Firefox and its forks are one of the few web browsers that are completely free from the grasps of Google's dirty grimey hands as they do not use the Chromium engine to function. They have committed to continuing to support Manifest V2 "for the forseeable future", according to a blog post from earlier this year. If you're worried about privacy and aren't too keen on using Firefox itself for whatever reason, forks like LibreWolf are also available.

 

[zrfv]

Many browsers like Brave Browser and Supermium use modified versions of the Chromium engine as their foundations, so their reliability in the long-term is up for debate as the Chromium engine will continue to evolve and change.

you can also try Ungoogled Chromium. It's chrome but with gugle telemetry completely removed. (google chrome source code is NOT full and does not include the telemetry part.)

 

[Telesphoreo]

I've been happy with Brave. The sync system is much better than Chromes. I moved a good while ago after hearing about Manifest v3 because I wanted to get used to a new browser that still would support v2. Eventually, we'll be at a point where if you want to block ads, you'll have to do it on a DNS level. It's not bad to setup your own VPN and block ads, but it's not free either, at least for a good enough VPS.

 

[zrfv]

Eventually, we'll be at a point where if you want to block ads, you'll have to do it on a DNS level.

That might happen if browsers really restricted its users and the mega over lords at google decided whats best for us. I don't see this happen in the future.

 

[Telesphoreo]

That might happen if browsers really restricted its users and the mega over lords at google decided whats best for us. I don't see this happen in the future.

I think doing it at a DNS level could be more popular in the end. The real question is how many people are going to want to change browsers and have to relearn a lot of things just for continued ad blocking? That was my scenario. I have things exactly the way I want them and every browser is slightly different. I doubt people will be setting up their own DNS servers but I'm sure we'll have more programs like AdGuard that install as an app and change your DNS settings. Blocking ads in browsers is better overall though because you can do it for platforms like YouTube, whereas DNS cannot.