Google already announced in 2018 that it wanted to change the interface from the old standard, called Manifest V2, to a new standard: Manifest V3. After years of preparation, the manufacturer is now getting serious. For users of V2 extensions, the browser displays a warning informing them that they will stop working soon. If you want to install a V2 extension from the Chrome Store, Google will present V3-compatible alternatives to the extension you are looking for in addition to the same warning.
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Starting with the current version 127, Google plans to “gradually” phase out V2 support in its browser. According to Google, this is starting with non-pre-release versions of Chrome (Der, Canary, and Beta). Companies that determine the availability of V2 extensions with the ExtensionManifestV2Availability group, Google is giving Google a grace period until June 2025,
According to Survey from chrome-stats.com There are still over 50,000 extensions that still use the old standard. Because of the change, these will no longer work after the change.
The change in view was always controversial. Among other things, Google cites a more modern architecture, higher security and better performance of the new standard Arguments for V3 in the field. However, consumer advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) describe V3 as ” Fraudulent and threatening,
Ad blockers failed
Ad blockers have been particularly affected by the changes. According to Raymond Hill, programmer at the popular ad blocker uBlock Origin, the new standards mean that extensions can no longer block ads as reliably as before.
In the future, Hill will offer a slimmed-down version uBlock Origin Lite (uBol) for the Chrome browser only and recommends that users of his extension switch to Firefox because uBlock Origin works best there (Mozilla considers Firefox its browser) Committed to supporting V2 along with V3,
Other manufacturers have made versions of their ad blockers available for Manifest V3, for example Adblock Plus And AdGuard. Although the maker of AdBlock Plus doesn’t go into detail about the effectiveness of its new version, AdGuard does Blog post on the impact of Manifest V3 written.
When asked “Is it true that ad blockers will work much worse in the future?” it says: “No, this is not true. Although ad blockers will lose a small part of their functionality, they will still be able to provide almost the same filtering quality as Manifest V2.”
and other browsers?
In this context, the question arises as to how the changes will affect other browsers – after all, Edge, Vivaldi and Brave, among others, use the same code base as Chrome. Microsoft has announced that it will fully embrace the move to V3 and that Edge will one day no longer support V2 extensions. They are tight-lipped on when the switch will happen This time But outside.
Vivaldi V2 wants extensions By June 2025 Support. However, we don’t yet know in detail how V3 will impact. In a blog post, Vivaldi developer Julian Picalosa certainly can’t rule out the possibility that Google’s changes will also Affect Vivaldi ad blocker,
And there is some cautious wording in Brave’s announcements as well: they intend to support V2 “in a limited way” even if it is eventually removed from the Chrome(-ium) code, i.e. in June 2025. They also apparently plan to use the ad blockers AdGuard AdBlocker, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix to support them “as best as possible” in their V2 versions.
It looks like there may be a lot of frustration in store for users and add-on and browser developers in the coming weeks.
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