If you swear by adblockers like uBlock Origin, you may soon need to switch away from Google Chrome – Google’s blog post noted that it has started to disable certain extensions that uses the Manifest V2 standard, which is the backbone of most adblockers, including uBlock Origin.
The End Of uBlock Origin?
Google’s reasoning for phasing out Manifest V2 is mostly a security one, and it argued that this extension architecture gave extensions too much access, which can be a problem if used nefariously by hackers to steal user data (and to be fair to Google, it’s a legitimate concern). To be clear, Manifest V3 will not kill adblockers entirely, though it’ll make their capabilities more limited than it used to be.
Users has began reporting cases of extensions like uBlock Origin getting disabled, which comes in effect with Chrome’s version 130 update released just recently. While the extension does have its Manifest V3 equivalent, it’s fundamentally different to the point it has been given a separate name for it, called uBlock Origin Lite, and is said to be “less effective at dealing with websites using anti-content blocker.”
While unofficial workarounds exist to override the ban on Manifest V2 extensions (which involves a trip to Registry Editor – don’t do that unless you know what you’re doing), such workaround will only work until June 2025. If you still want the full functionality of uBlock Origin, you might have to start looking for other browsers from this point on.
Pokdepinion: Hard to say if MV3-based adblockers will be at least nearly as good as MV2 equivalents.
