GoKawiilEdgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Chrome has removed the workarounds that allowed users to install Manifest V2 extensions such as uBlock Origin.
uBlock Origin is no longer available to install from the Chrome Web Store.
Chromium-based browsers can choose to support MV2 extensions, but it remains to be seen whether they will continue doing so in the long run.
A few years ago, Chrome started working towards deprecating Manifest V2 in favor of Manifest V3. This meant that extensions such as uBlock Origin would no longer work on Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. However, there were still workarounds that you could use to install such extensions, including using Chrome flags. Now, those methods are going away as well.
The Google Chrome team has started removing flags that allowed the use of MV2, and let users install extensions that depended on it. Chrome developer Devlin Cronin posted a commit to the Chromium project that removes the “kExtensionManifestV2Disabled feature” (via Neowin).
He explained that “MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in any supported version of Chrome,” and also mentioned the reason behind the decision: maintaining MV2 is complex, will introduce a ton of technical debt, and has various security risks. Cronin also mentioned that the team reportedly found several bugs that are specifically related to MV2.
Will you switch browsers to keep using ad-blockers like uBlock Origin? 24 votes Yes, I'm switching away from Chrome 58 % No, Chrome is the browser for me 17 % I stopped using Chrome years ago 25 % I don't use ad-blockers 0 %
Effectively, this means none of the extensions that depend on Manifest V2 will be usable in Chrome, including uBlock Origin, which isn’t compatible with Manifest V3. In fact, the extension is no longer available to install from the Chrome Web Store.
Google removed the extension from the Chrome Web Store last year, but users could still use the GitHub repository to head directly to the web store listing and install it. Now, even that’s not possible.
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