Google has announced that Chrome extensions based on Manifest V2 will stop working in mid-2024. This change will affect a wide range of popular extensions.
Manifest V2 and V3 are like “the rule books” for Chrome extensions. While V2 has been the norm, Google is pushing developers towards Manifest V3, citing improvements in privacy and security.
“The modifications to Manifest V3 are designed to improve the user experience in terms of security and privacy,” said Google product manager David Li on the Chrome developer blog.
However, This transition is not without controversy.. Since Google’s main source of revenue is advertising, some users and developers are skeptical of the claim that the change is not intended to limit content blockers.
“The change will especially affect extensions like uBlock Origin,” said one user in an online forum, highlighting the concerns about reduced functionality of certain types of extensions low Manifest V3.
The end date for extensions with Chrome Manifest V2 is June 2024
From June 2024Google will start Disable Manifest V2-based extensions in all development editions of Chrome, with a gradual rollout towards stable versions of the browser. Enterprise users, however, will have the option to extend support for V2 extensions until June 2025.
During the transition, Google has worked on improving Manifest V3, implementing support for off-screen documents, better control over the lifespan of Service Workers, an API for user scripts, and improved support for content filtering.
This change is significant, since will affect numerous Chrome extensionsparticularly those that are not actively maintained or cannot fully migrate to Manifest V3 and is included in other Google future plans such as eliminating cookies.
Other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox will continue to support extensions based on both Manifest V2 and V3, thus offering users greater flexibility in choosing extensions.
Thus, while Google moves towards a more secure and private future with Manifest V3, Chrome users could face losing some of their favorite extensions unless they are updated in time to the great transition of 2024.
