Changes Ahead For uBlock Origin And uBlock Origin Lite
In Part Due To The Demise Of Manifest V2
If you are a fan of using uBlock Origin or uBlock Origin Lite, on sites other than this one, you have to make some choices. Until now both extensions were available for Chromium based browsers and Firefox, but that is no longer the case. A recent code review by Mozilla flagged uBlock Origin Lite and resulted in it being pulled from their extensions. Unfortunately as it was an automated process it is not yet clear why the code was flagged, but for now you can only get it from GitHub. Conversely, the move to Manifest v3 means that uBlock Origin will soon no longer be usable on Chromium based browsers as it depends on Manifest v2. It is there for now, but without a major update it will be going soon
Long story short, you will not be able to use the same adblocking extension on both browsers, a minor inconvenience but worth knowing why they have disappeared. While you can’t donate directly to the developer of uBlock Origin to fund an upgrade, you can help those that maintain the lists of ad servers to block. The Register offers a bit more detail in their post.
So, if you use Chrome, or a Chrome-based browser – which is most of them – then you will soon be compelled to remove uBO and switch to uBlock Origin Lite instead.
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What if I stop updating chrome? Can I keep UBO?
Yes
I won’t be compelled to remove anything, other than Alphabets damn browser.
Edge is Chromium-based but they said they’re keeping both V2 and V3…
unless something changed…
It changed. Microsoft has a support article up that says they will be removing Manifest v2 support, but they don’t have a final timeline on it yet. Mozilla is patching the WebRequests API back into v3, so even though they will technically stop supporting v2, extensions like uBlock Origin will still function.
Chrome also stopped Malwarebytes browser guard from working on it. That’s part of my anti-virus. So I simply moved to another browser. So long chrome!
I have used a registry edit to force manifest v2 for chrome for another year but I use mostly Firefox that won’t have this problem. Brave browser has committed to keep using manifest v2 extensions as long as possible and actually promotes and offers ublock origin from within the browsers settings so for everything I used to use chrome for I now use Brave for. The only reason I’ll ever use chrome again is for love captions and translating entire websites easily and for everything else I have no use for chrome anymore.
Brave and Opera browsers are staying on Manifest 2. So, change the browser and DO Not switch to the lite version of uBlock Origin.
Seems my previous comment didn’t post.
Anyway, it is time for everyone to upgrade to Firefox, it is a far better browser compared to chrome, as it has improved significantly over time. Now the UX is far better, and it offers more features, while using fewer resources.