Google Chrome’s move to Manifest V3 for extensions is closing its final loophole and, with it, bringing the end of many ad blocker tools.
The move to Manifest V3 has been in the works for years at this point, with one of the main points of criticism from users being that the change would break most ad blockers due to the new permissions structure and Google’s focus on privacy. The impacts of that were felt broadly in 2024 and, now, Google is closing the book on Manifest V2 and, in turn, popular ad blockers such as uBlock Origin.
CyberNews points out a Chromium commit that removes support for the “kExtensionManifestV2Disabled” flag, which is referred to as “dead code” seeing as Chrome no longer supports Manifest V2 extensions. This removal acts as the final stop for many Manifest V2-based ad blocker extensions that were still in use today – the flag was effectively a loophole to continue using these extensions.
A Googler on the commit explains:
MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in any supported version of Chrome, and we are removing support for them and the associated functionality. We won’t be able to provide / maintain this functionality indefinitely due to the complexity and tech debt, as well as the security risks it entails (we’ve actually found a number of bugs that are specific to MV2 lately). Of course, other browsers can continue supporting these if they so desire.
