Chrome users are losing their best ad-blocker

A few years ago, Chrome started working towards deprecating Manifest V2 in favor of Manifest V3. This meant that extensions such as uBlock Origin would no longer work on Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. However, there were still workarounds that you could use to install such extensions, including using Chrome flags. Now, those methods are going away as well.

The Google Chrome team has started removing flags that allowed the use of MV2, and let users install extensions that depended on it. Chrome developer Devlin Cronin posted a commit to the Chromium project that removes the “kExtensionManifestV2Disabled feature” (via Neowin).

He explained that “MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in any supported version of Chrome,” and also mentioned the reason behind the decision: maintaining MV2 is complex, will introduce a ton of technical debt, and has various security risks. Cronin also mentioned that the team reportedly found several bugs that are specifically related to MV2.

Effectively, this means none of the extensions that depend on Manifest V2 will be usable in Chrome, including uBlock Origin, which isn’t compatible with Manifest V3. In fact, the extension is no longer available to install from the Chrome Web Store.

Google removed the extension from the Chrome Web Store last year, but users could still use the GitHub repository to head directly to the web store listing and install it. Now, even that’s not possible.

The “Allow legacy extension manifest versions” flag, used as a workaround to install uBlock Origin through sideloadable packages, is also not available in the latest stable version of Chrome. Basically, if you’re a Chrome user, you simply can’t use uBlock Origin anymore.

There’s still the uBlock Origin Lite extension, which is compatible with Manifest V3. However, it doesn’t have a lot of the advanced features uBlock offered.

Chromium-based browsers like Opera and Microsoft Edge, on the other hand, can choose to support MV2 if they so desire. Opera and Edge still support uBlock Origin. However, whether they will continue to do so and for how long remains to be seen.

If you’re a uBlock Origin user and you don’t want to switch to uBlock Origin Lite, you should switch to a non-Chromium browser, such as Firefox, which has confirmed that it will support Manifest V2 for the foreseeable future. Firefox is also the browser that uBO developer, Raymond Hill, recommends using on the extension’s GitHub repository and website.