With the upcoming release of Chrome version 150, ad blockers based on the V2 manifest will no longer work in the browser.
Although the V2 manifest was phased out last year, workarounds have existed in Chrome until now that allowed older extensions to function. This was particularly important for ad blockers. The V2 manifest allowed for full filtering of websites.
Currently, most Chrome extensions have been rewritten to use the currently supported version 3 manifest. While this makes no difference for most of them, functionality is severely limited for some. This is the case, for example, with ad blockers, which are significantly less effective in the new version.
Chrome 150, followed by 151, removes all flags that previously allowed older extensions to function.
Without the kExtensionManifestV2Disabled, ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported, ExtensionManifestV2Availability, and AllowLegacyMV2Extensions flags, V2-compliant extensions will no longer function. This means that all code enabling their operation will be removed from the browser.
Some ad blockers have supported Manifest V3 for quite some time. Users of these extensions won’t notice any difference after the new version of the Chrome extension is released. However, if you use uBlock Origin, for example, the extension will soon stop working.
Manifest V2 is being phased out due to known issues, some of which relate to security. The new version, meanwhile, introduces a number of restrictions. One of them is a limit on the number of blocking rules.
Will these changes affect other Chromium-based browsers? In theory, other browsers may still support Manifest V2. Microsoft plans to phase out support for Manifest V2 in Edge. Opera, on the other hand, has stated that it will maintain support for older extensions for as long as possible.
Brave has no plans to drop support for the V2 manifest among Chromium-based browsers.
Firefox is another option. It supports both the V2 and V3 manifests and is in no way dependent on Google’s actions.
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