alt Hacker News"Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
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Recent and related:
Chrome Canary just killed uBlock Origin and other Manifest V2 extensions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757178 - Oct 2024 (46 comments)
That one never made the frontpage, so I'm leaving the current thread up.
For people that have somehow missed the story, manifest v3 removed support for certain powerful network apis, severly limiting ad-blockers capabilities. uBlock Origin will not work anymore without manifest v2 (there's a v3 compatible lite version of uBlock Origin).
"browsers using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025"
To extend ManifestV2 in Chrome, add the text below to a text file, saving and running it as a .reg will create and add a value of 2 to "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome key
(When you open/run a .reg file, it updates your registry, usually preceeded by a warning.)
Alternatively, you could do this manually by pressing the Windows key, type "run" (without the quotes) and enter, type "regedit" (without the quotes) and enter, then navigate as far as you can to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome key
You may find there is no "Chrome" key and will need to create it, as well as creating ExtensionManifestV2Availability
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome]
"ExtensionManifestV2Availability"=dword:00000002I've finally switched (back) to firefox today.
I switched from firefox to chrome for their superior devtools a few years back, but hopefully firefox has had time to catch up.
Everything old is new again!
Hopefully this is the inflection point for Chrome. Despite all their made-up "security" reasons, everyone knows this is solely about making adblock less effective. For many users, adblock is what makes chrome bearable - and if they make it unbearable, then those users will leave. Slowly but surely.
Google seems much too sure of itself making this change. I hope their arrogance pays off just the same as Microsoft's did with IE.
Switch to a different browser! The Chrome monopoly only exists because we collectively allow it to exist.
I hoped this day would never arrive, but alas all good things must come to an end. Since adopting uMatrix, my web experience radically changed and I can never go back to a pre-uMatrix world. With the v2 removal, I've got to eliminate Chrome from my life.
I also adopted a workflow that has been very conveninent for many years, essentially using Chrome for personal stuff and Firefox for work and other various things (especially once container support arrived!). It's not going to be easy to undo years of muscle memory, but I guess it's time to bite the bullet.
I'm addition to all the calls to switch to another browser I'd also have people consider the websites they use as potential dependencies on chrome.
Right now most websites don't seem to require any specific chrome feature but with Google's pushing some API's like their Web Environment Integrity proposal I'm worried sites will start to lock their site to Google Chrome and their official Mobile clients.
This submission title does not appear to be accurate. Here's what was actually said:
> October 9th 2024: an update on Manifest V2 phase-out.
> Over the last few months, we have continued with the Manifest V2 phase-out. Currently the chrome://extensions page displays a warning banner for all users of Manifest V2 extensions. Additionally, we have started disabling Manifest V2 extensions on pre-stable channels.
> We will now begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable. This change will be slowly rolled out over the following weeks. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025. See our May 2024 blog for more context.
Adblockers are my least concern, a lot of other useful add-ons won't work, like Imagus, Redirector, Violentmonkey, etc. So I switched to Firefox a few months ago.
Has anyone been using the v3 compatible version of uBlock Origin? Have you noticed much of a difference? From what I read there isn't supposed to be much of a difference?
Goodbye Chrome, hello firefox
For people who want to stick with a Chrome-based browser while still using the full-featured uBlock Origin: Brave will keep supporting uBlock Origin even after Manifest V2's removal from Chromium.
I think at this point I'd rather pay for a desktop browser, something with blocking baked in at compile time. It would be such a QoL improvement that it's worth paying a yearly subscription for.
When the hell will firefox have a decent profile manager?? It's the one thing that is preventing me from switching over. No, container tabs are NOT it.
I was looking for an excuse to switch back to Firefox anyways.
It is really crazy that we are taken hostage/blackmail by whatever harmful decision Google takes in their own interest.
I'm curious what V3 doesn't allow that V2 does.
I read an article about Ublock Origin light. It claimed it couldn't do script injection and content blocking but I've written V3 extensions that do that though maybe what I'm thinking and what ublock origin does are different things. Does anyone know specific details or maybe a pointer to docs on what's not possible?
I am tied to Microsoft Edge for sync between desktop and phone, and Microsoft Edge on iOS has AdBlock built in. But looking at this it seems inevitable that Edge will retain V2.
As to switching to Firefox? I'd love to, but Firefox on iOS refuses to put in an AdBlocker. Yea, you can use Firefox Focus but that one doesn't sync.
I don't understand Mozilla's stance on this.
I will recommend Librewolf. Default Firefox has a lot of garbage and bloat.
And people ask me why I don't run current versions of browsers.
Anyone using a PiHole to block on their network? I've been aware of it, but honestly, ad blocking was good enough that I didn't go down that route. Is PiHole good enough? Is there a big problem with false positives?
> Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension.
I'm curious about which extensions will be recommended to replace uBlock Origin after it's disabled. I'm sure those alternatives will see a surge in installs.
Also, why doesn't the creator of uBlock Origin update the V2 version to the V3 version? I know V3 version isn't as good as V2, but if you're developing that product, at least give your users something instead of leaving them with nothing. Otherwise, they may end up choosing poor alternatives.
If anyone has any guides or blogs related to migrating away from Chrome for a multi-decade user (thousands of bookmarks, saved pages/read later, etc.) I would sure be interested.
Every time I try to migrate my very large bookmark collection to another browser, it either misbehaves and partially loses some data or fails completely.
Does Mozilla have a PR blitz, to pick up a big chunk of users who have a moment of disruption, and want their full uBlock Origin?
It might've been better, had uBlock Origin Lite not happened, but is there still a migration opportunity here, and is Mozilla working it?
I'm years ahead of them. I disabled Chrome years ago.
There's gonna be a new browser wars.
How exciting!
Time to do your part. Switch to ladybird!
(Insert imaginary we want you for the army poster here)
Darn, ublock also no longer works on Firefox for YouTube. At the beginning of each video there is one forced ad and sometimes the video stops for no reason.
I suppose they want everyone to stop using the Internet and read books.
What does this mean for browsers derived from chrome, like Arc? I heard they plan on continuing to support Manifest v2, but will ublock continue to be maintained for chrome?
can i just setup dns blocking on my network to block the ad requests? especially on youtube, ublock origin stopped working a few weeks ago.
Would it be possible to do an OS level ad blocker that works similarly to uBO?
Time to switch my last machine that still uses Chrome as the default.
V3 has some utterly/unnecessarily complicated shite going on, like offscreen documents, and I think it will get worse as time progresses. Google really needs some bludgeoning.
... can we just have a browser that has the functionality of uBlock Origin built-in?
Feeling nostalgic for a time when browsing HTTP wasn't such a persistently-adversarial experience :(
URL requests should go to a OS level, where the user can intercept them at will. We do not need to give browsers the socket API.
Manifest V3 is not the problem itself. But removing webRequestBlocking and creating some ridiculous limits for the DNR api are, these changes should be reversed downstream.
chrome hasnt been cool for a while
Time to try Supermium again, I couldn't get it to install using my Chrome profile last time, maybe fixed by now.
Unless Supermium is following the manifest path too? Doubt it.
Well, the web is unusable without an adblocker. Time to move to another browser.
I wish some brave enough (no relation to Brave) soul patched Blink so it became possible to delegate URL blocking decisions to an external process via some sort of IPC. In goes a full URL and maybe an opaque session ID so some state may be tracked, out goes a boolean value. Assume all are allowed if this process cannot be connected to.
Can't we avoid the Manifest bullshit altogether?
I remember how IE plugins roles: just dll inject into the process.
If only Mozilla hadn't wasted all that time and money and created a Chrome-comparable in stability/performance and Vivaldi-comparable in customization, we could've have an easy way out of this current mess...
(v3 drops not only ad-blockers but also user style managers, so a significant degradation of the web interfaces)
Notably, Firefox is not removing v2 support (at least for now as of March 2024)
> Firefox, however, has no plans to deprecate MV2 and will continue to support MV2 extensions for the foreseeable future. And even if we re-evaluate this decision at some point down the road, we anticipate providing a notice of at least 12 months for developers to adjust accordingly and not feel rushed.[1]
[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2024/03/13/manifest-v3-manif...