Manifest V2 was disabled on my Chromebook today! But I got it back temporarily!
Not_Oles
Hosting ProviderContent Writer
Manifest V2 is a specification for Chrome browser extensions.
Chrome fans have known for a long time that Manifest V2 was about to be replaced by Manifest V3, and that V2's final day was approaching fast.
Four days ago, I learned on HN that V2's end had almost arrived. And now, for my Chromebook, the beginning of the end for Manifest V2 actually happened today!
This afternoon I updated my Chromebook from Chrome OS version 133.0.6943.132 to Chrome OS version 133.0.6943.146. After rebooting, I saw the above screenshot.
For now, at least, it was easy to re-enable the V2 extensions I use all the time. All I had to do was click the Manage Extensions link shown in the above screenshot, go to the Manage Extensions page, and re-enable the extensions.
Apparently I didn't need it today, but, as explained by Raymond Hill (gorhill, the author of uBlock Origin), an alternative method to extend Manifest V2 to June 2025 is provided through this Chromium Enterprise policy.
The most common issue with the Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 transition probably is the disabling of uBlock
Origin. But, for me, and for others also facing significant vision-related challenges, the end of Chrome's High Contrast Extension is a significant loss. I also will miss SwitchyOmega's ability to quickly enable my web proxy.
While reading the above linked HN discussion, I decided to try Brave browser on Android. For a while I have used Firefox Nightly as an alternative to Chrome. While there seems to be a lot of customization possible in Firefox's dark mode, the default seems to be lower contrast grey text, while Brave uses white text as the default in "night mode." Additionally, Brave's AI search page has two inputs, one to continue in context and the other for an unrelated aside. This double input approach seems handy to me. Firefox seems to want to keep the tab bar at the bottom, but Brave allows tab manipulation to be controlled in the top bar.
Another positive point for Brave is that the design of the Brave Lion logo somehow reminds me of a Yeti! Having a Yeti or a Lion always standing guard, watching my back -- it makes me feel safe!
Besides trying Brave, another possibility for me is moving away from Chromebooks as my daily driver. Maybe I could do equally well running NetBSD or Alpine or Debian locally.
I hope this post is useful to others here who also have lost or might very soon lose Manifest V2.
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Comments
The only good thing about this is google is inadvertently killing their golden goose - advertising through the chrome browser both on mobile and desktop. Mobile being the biggest target. Because people are seeing alternatives pop up they're trying them over the default, and realizing 'oh wow, this isn't shit'.
Congrats google, you're losing a user every few seconds for the next few months - and that's a trend your shareholders will watch play out in real time - as these people move to other browser their usage of youtube ads will also go down.
Pretty awesome watching a megacorp crumble under their own leaderships incompetence.
Anyway, I've moved to Thorium on desktop, and if you just want a chromium based browser that's bare bones, that'll do the job. Firefox on mobile works pretty solid.
Trying. . . .
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
use brave at your own risk...
https://cryptoslate.com/brave-browser-faces-heat-from-users-amidst-referral-link-autofill-scandal/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
they also whitelist facebook and instragram tracking links
you can find a lot of reasons not to use brave, I would rather firefox with privacybadger and ublock.
Hi @ZizzyDizzyMC! This is the first time I have heard of Thorium Browser! Thanks for the tip!
The trick is that I need the dark mode from Chrome's now deprecated Manifest V2 High Contrast extension because of severe myopia, astigmatism, and mature cataracts. (My Chromebook has a reverse color accessibility feature, but that's not quite the same as what the High Contrast extension does.)
I am guessing that Thorium might not be able to continue with High Contrast or uBlock Origin or any other Manifest V2 extensions past June of this year. But I hope I am wrong.
Brave has a "night mode" which seems to work for me on my phone, so I thought I would try Brave on my Chromebook too. Firefox is another possibility. Additional ideas would be great! Thanks again for telling me about Thorium!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
@dgc1980 Thanks for these really helpful comments! I will check carefully tomorrow, as it is getting late here now.
May I please ask what you think about Mozilla's recent Firefox policy changes? Thanks very much again!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
that is a hard one, it seems they are trying to cover their arses for legal actions if any arise, but it is also worrying that they removed the "we would never sell your data" from their FAQ
I am not really sure how that would help (longer term). Are they in a position to keep supporting Manifest V2 after Google has removed the Manifest V2 code from Chromium?
Also, they seem to be a few versions behind Chromium (130 vs. 134) - what does that mean in terms of security?
And that applies to all the Chromium forks - yes, they might keep Manifest V2 enabled as long as possible (and keep it a bit longer, as they might be a few versions behind Chromium anyway), but is anyone going to keep maintaining the code for Manifest V2 once Google removes it from the Chromium code base?
Using Firefox (+ uBlock Origin of course) here, switched about 2 years ago whenever they first started announcing this manifest v3 bs. It's not perfect, but works pretty well on my Windows laptop and Android phone. Firefox on my iPad is hot garbage though, and doesn't have addons, so I use Safari there (with Adguard extension).
As far as I'm aware Thorium, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera plan to keep manifest V2 operating indefinitely. Honorable mentions for firefox based browsers are Librewolf and Pale Moon, I've used pale moon for ages on most of my linux laptops.
Soooooooooooo are we getting a Firefox OS comeback?
youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
Firefox OS comeback? Still running Firefox OS 2.6 prerelease on my Sony z3c...
There's a site where you can test ad blockers efficiency. Tried Ublock Lite with Manifest 3 and got 91/100, tried Adguard and once got 95 and then suddenly 75 (I think I changed some setting). What do you guys get as a score with your adblockers/browsers?
https://adblock-tester.com/
Edit: With Adguard App on Android and Chrome Browser I get 93/100. Good enough
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Firefox + uBlock Origin
cpu_logger | Recommended providers: Layer7, dataforest (Avoro/PHP-Friends), @host_c
That site tests a few common trackers - for the ad tests it doesn't even test real-world examples, so I am not sure what the score would tell me in that case. What does a score of 90 vs. a score of 70 tell you then?
Sure, ublock lite might be "optimised" to show a high score for that particular test, but that's not really useful for me if it doesn't block the trackers/ads on the sites I actually visit (and so far I am actually using my own list for those sites - and that's the thing that manifest v3 will prevent me from doing).
Hi @Ympker!
My Chromebook with Chrome Version 133.0.6943.146 (Official Build) (64-bit) and uBlock Origin 1.62.0 gets 96 points out of 100 (11 services, 22 checks).
How is the score calculated? The site seems to list four categories containing a total of 22 tests. Of the 22 tests, all but three were marked as passed. The remaining three are marked as "test has most likely passed (file size does not match the original or takes a long time to load)."
Since the adblock-tester site seems possibly to be trying to sell Adblock, the scoring procedure might not favor uBlock.
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
With Brave v1.76.73 (Mar 5, 2025) the adblock-tester site seems to give identical results to what was received for Chrome.
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Interestingly good result. Gotta try UBO with Firefox tomorrow. How exactly the site calculates I'm not sure, I found it on a subreddit the other day when looking for alternatives for adblocking.
It might be trying to sell adblockers (given the advertisement up top), but then again, it doesn't seem too biased towards paid adblockeds either as @lukast__ scored 100/100 with UBO+Firefox.
I agree that every site you use may work differently but still thought the site was helpful for primary orientation. I also use anti adblock dns in the browser on top of the adblock extension. Maybe that actually is contraproductive given my relatively lower score. Then again, not sure how exactly the score is calculated. As mentioned above I found it in a subreddit about abblockers the other day and played around a bit with it.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next
Could this improve things? What would be the business case for a standalone Chrome?
Long overdue. If Microsoft could be in big trouble over Internet Explorer back then, I always wonder why Google is still intact.
The all seeing eye sees everything...
Realistically this needs a strong competitor. Firefox getting a big chunk of their money from google is obviously not ideal...
Does anyone know whether AdBlock Browser extensions in MV3 are more powerful than Adguard/Adblock DNS that you can configure in the browser (or even system wide)? Technically the DNS shouldn't be bound to any rule limitations like MV3 extensions are, so it seems like it may be more efficient. Then again, I'm not sure if that's the only thing to consider here as Browser extensions also had some nice features sometimes (hide this element etc). Is using adblock dns and adblock browser extension then the best solution for MV3 browsers, or do they (extension/dns) sabotage each other?
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Instantly switched to Firefox. Don't even remember what was that Chrome browser.
Unfortunately I have to use Chrome for some stuff
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UBlock Origin Lite could also be an alternative for ad blocking. though it's not as powerful as UBlock Origin due to manifest v3 limitations, it works great enough