The end of uBlock Origin in Chrome is now weeks away, not months

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Ad-Verse: Google announced the transition from Manifest V2 browser add-ons a few years ago, but kept a few well-known "secrets" available to support legacy extensions. Now, Chromium developers have explained that MV2-based extensions are completely going away in just a few weeks.

Starting with the next major release, Chromium will stop supporting Manifest V2 extensions. The change will affect users who have clung to uBlock Origin in Chrome, Edge, and other major web browsers based on Chromium. Even Opera, despite stating otherwise, will soon lose this capability.

Chromium contributor Anton Bershanskiy recently highlighted how the newest Chrome release (149) is going to be the last offering some sort of MV2 compatibility. The developer quoted a recent commit by Chromium programmer Devlin Cronin, who stated that future releases are going to remove the "kExtensionManifestV2Disabled" feature from the engine's code base.

Cronin said that the ExtensionManifestV2Disabled feature has been default-enabled for more than a year, meaning Chromium-derived browsers were unable to use the "effectively-dead" compatibility code. The feature is part of a long list of tricks users and browser makers could employ to keep supporting MV2 add-ons, and according to Bershanskiy, the worst is yet to come.

A giant mega-corporation like Google cannot support a feature such as MV2 indefinitely, Cronin explained. Removing compatibility flags will allegedly improve the reliability and security of Chrome and Chromium, as MV2 code is now considered unwanted technical debt that is too complex to maintain.

After Chromium/Chrome 150 loses the kExtensionManifestV2Disabled flag, users will not be able to install MV2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Furthermore, Chrome 151 will remove the following additional methods users relied on to keep legacy add-ons working:

• ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported
• ExtensionManifestV2Availability
• AllowLegacyMV2Extensions

According to a recent message by uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill, Opera will follow the same path as Chrome because Chromium is completely removing support for Manifest Version 2. Hill remarked how Opera's previous pledge was about continuing support for MV2 add-ons despite Google's decisions over the Chromium project.

Google started moving away from MV2 in 2024, asking Chrome users to replace older extensions with newer MV3 ones. Manifest V3 add-ons such as uBlock Origin Lite are allegedly more secure and easier to manage in the browser, but they cannot technically provide the same level of functionality available through MV2. Mozilla recently remarked that the team has no plans to abandon MV2, leaving Firefox and its Gecko layout engine as the sole platform offering full support for uBlock Origin and other security tools that cannot work with MV3.

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The end of uBlock Origin in Chrome is now weeks away, not months

 

[Theinsanegamer]

" A giant mega-corporation like Google cannot support a feature such as MV2 indefinitely, Cronin explained. Removing compatibility flags will allegedly improve the reliability and security of Chrome and Chromium, as MV2 code is now considered unwanted technical debt that is too complex to maintain."

BUUUUUUUULSHIT.

A giant megacorps like Google should have 0issues maintaining legacy code. See also: win32. Google just wants to de fang adblocker a permanently to fill their greedy pockets.

 

[oasked]

And this is exactly why I uninstalled Chrome about a year ago on my Desktops!

UBlock Origin works perfectly elsewhere

 

[Kirby1]

Guess we'll all be switching to Firefox soon.

 

[maxxcool7421]

Firefox, waterfox, edge work just fine.

 

[TheBigT42]

Firefox, waterfox, edge work just fine.

Edge isn't an option because it exposes all your saved passwords in ram

 

[mgilbert]

I've been using U-Block Origin Lite for several months now. I haven't really noticed any difference between it and the original. It seems to work fine.

 

[trparky]

Something something AdGuard for Windows.

 

[Anton Longshot]

My take: "the end of Chrome is now weeks away, not months"
At least on my Windows PC's.
I need to conjure up a hardware solution soon in case others follow suit. Been postponing this for far too long.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Firefox, waterfox, edge work just fine.

edge is chromium and will be affected by this too.

My take: "the end of Chrome is now weeks away, not months"
At least on my Windows PC's.
I need to conjure up a hardware solution soon in case others follow suit. Been postponing this for far too long.

Linux is no different. Anything based on Chrome is going to be affected by this.

I've been using U-Block Origin Lite for several months now. I haven't really noticed any difference between it and the original. It seems to work fine.

Lite doesnt always hit the youtube BS, and it lacks the granular control Origin has for those really pesky ads that you have to hit manually.

Lite is also much worse at blocking the ad block blockers that the likes of Youtube are now implementing, whereas Origin nails that garbage.

 

[NumberNine]

Browser usage is like Frogger: You need to be standing on the right log at the right time and also be prepared to immediately move to a new log, as yours will certainly sink eventually.

Chrome has been a dumpster fire for years, Firefox isn't far behind. Brave just took their masks off. LibreWolf is where you wanna be right now.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Browser usage is like Frogger: You need to be standing on the right log at the right time and also be prepared to immediately move to a new log, as yours will certainly sink eventually.

Chrome has been a dumpster fire for years, Firefox isn't far behind. Brave just took their masks off. LibreWolf is where you wanna be right now.

How did brave "take the masks off"?

 

[Gravitytr1]

Browser usage is like Frogger: You need to be standing on the right log at the right time and also be prepared to immediately move to a new log, as yours will certainly sink eventually.

Chrome has been a dumpster fire for years, Firefox isn't far behind. Brave just took their masks off. LibreWolf is where you wanna be right now.

Whoah, what did brave do? Aren't they the only corporate permitted way to have a good browser on Apple hardware?

 

[TechMonger]

On my Chromebook (Chrome browser is the only option) Ublock Origin died a year ago. Did it continue working on Chrome on Windows?

 

[GeoffreyA]

Another reason why browsers should have stuck with their own engine: Presto, Trident, etc. Not good to be at the hands of Google.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

On my Chromebook (Chrome browser is the only option) Ublock Origin died a year ago. Did it continue working on Chrome on Windows?

No, it was all the chromium browsers like brave and opera that were maintaining manifest V2 via legacy code that Google is now stripping out.

 

[madboyv1]

How did brave "take the masks off"?

Whoah, what did brave do? Aren't they the only corporate permitted way to have a good browser on Apple hardware?

If I had to guess, people are salty about the announced paid option:
https://www.techspot.com/news/112671-brave-charging-60-version-browser-removes-features-you.html

 

[Axeia]

Turns out handing control of your browser to the worlds largest advertising company might lead to adblockers working suboptimal, shocker.

 

[OortCloud]

If I had to guess, people are salty about the announced paid option:
https://www.techspot.com/news/112671-brave-charging-60-version-browser-removes-features-you.html

Who cares? It's such a fuss over nothing. Free Brave is still the way to go - all the benefits of Chromium with none of Google's horseh1t? Cookie blocks, YouTube ad blocks, you can even turn off YouTube slop trays like Games and Shorts and revert it to the site it was before Google started to ratchet up the monetization and slop.

 

[Karlos95]

You are basically stupid if you aren't running Brave browser by now.

 

[dznmdrwutmynamiz]

In related news, the end of Chrome on my PC is just weeks away!

Just kidding, I uninstalled that garbage years ago.

 

[Axiarus]

You are basically stupid if you aren't running Brave browser by now.

In 2016, Brave promised to remove banner ads from websites and replace
them with their own, basically trying to extract money directly from
websites without the consent of their owners

In 2016, CEO Brendan Eich unilaterally added a fringe, pay-to-win
Wikipedia clone into the default search engine list.

In 2017, they terminated the alternative browser Link Bubble, which they
had bought earlier.

In 2018, Tom Scott and other creators noticed Brave was soliciting
donations in their names without their knowledge or consent.

In 2019, Brave taunted Firefox users who visited their homepage.

In 2020, Brave got caught injecting URLs with affiliate codes when users
tried browsing to various websites.

In 2020, they silently started injecting ads into their home page
backgrounds, pocketing the revenue. There was a lot of pushback: "the
sponsored backgrounds give a bad first impression."

In 2021, Brave's TOR window was found leaking DNS queries, and a patch
was only widely deployed after articles called them out.

In 2022, Brave floated the idea of further discouraging users from
disabling sponsored messages.

In 2023, Brave got caught installing a paid VPN service on users'
computers without their consent.

In 2023, Brave got caught scraping and reselling people's data with
their custom web crawler, which was designed specifically not to
announce itself to website owners.

In 2024, Brave gave up on providing advanced fingerprint protection,
citing flawed statistics (people who would enable the protection would
likely disable Brave telemetry).

In 2025, Brave staff publish an article endorsing PrivacyTests and say
they "work with legitimate testing sites" like them. This article fails
to disclose PrivacyTests is run by a Brave Senior Architect.

In 2025, Brave taunted people searching for Firefox on the Google Play
Store. (The VP denied this occurred, but also demonstrated ignorance of
multiple different screenshots.)

In 2026, Brave releases a non bloated version called Origin, costs $60
with only 10 activations on Windows/macOS, but is completely free on
Linux. To gain market share and encourage major distros to replace
Firefox as default.

 

[BlackyNoir]

Never switched out of Firefox, since I installed Mozilla back in the day. Still working nicely.

 

[daffy duck]

Haven't fired up that POS browser in 18 months and didn't even install it on my new PC builds. Now manifest V3 is here even Brave and Vivaldi are no goes. Death to Chromium!

 

[IMABEARLOL]

The boomers who still use Chrome or Edge outside of work / school won't even see this article in their Facebook feeds.