Last year, Google announced its plans to kill extension support for the Manifest V2 framework, urging users to transition to extensions with Manifest V3 framework support.
The controversial move received backlash because it affected popular Google Chrome extensions, including uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million users susceptible to intrusive ads.
As you might have already noticed, Google already pulled the plug on uBlock Origin running on the Manifest V2 framework. Late last month, several users flagged pop-up messages when launching Google Chrome, indicating uBlock Origin no longer works on Chrome. Microsoft is also slated to follow suit with its Edge browser soon.
Google is aggressively ramping up its efforts to expedite the transition to extensions that support the Manifest V3 framework. You might have noticed Google has already scrapped unsupported extensions from its Web Store, including uBlock Origin.
While upgrading and transitioning to extensions with the Manifest v3 framework makes the most sense, Google’s warnings don’t necessarily mean that you can no longer use Manifest v2 supported extensions like uBlock Origin (via PCGamer).
When Chrome users receive the warning indicating the browser no longer supports V2 framework extensions, they are presented with two options: to either remove the extension or remove it.
The former option will uninstall the extension, which is presumably Google’s desired approach. However, the latter option allows you to navigate through Chrome’s settings and selecting the Manage extension option.
Through the highlighted setting option, you can reactivate uBlock Origin and confirm that you want to continue using the extension with the Manifest V2 extension. It’s as simple as turning the extension back on again.
When will Google pull support for the Manifest V2 framework?
Google explained that it transitioned from the Manifest V2 framework extension support to V3 because it “presents security risks by allowing unreviewed code to be executed in extensions.” For context, V3 only allows an extension to execute JavaScript as part of its package.
To that end, it remains unclear when Google will permanently pull the plug on uBlock Origin. However, the company launched uBlock Origin Lite — a new version of the app that’s Manifest V3 compliant.
However, the extension is fairly limited due to its compliance with the Manifest V3 framework threshold.
According to uBlock Origin’s developer Raymond Hill
“I consider uBO Lite to be too different from uBO to be an automatic replacement. You will have to explicitly find a replacement to uBO according to what you expect from a content blocker. uBO Lite may or may not fulfill your expectations.”
The developer claims uBlock Origin is “a pared-down version” that’s had to “sacrifice many features.” However, the change is imminent, but there are several uBlock Origin alternatives that you can adopt.
