![]() The most controversial change in Manifest V3 is replacing the Web Request API with a new Declarative Net Request API. After that, Google will (presumably) rip out all the code required to run Manifest V2 extensions. Chrome will start turning off Manifest V2 extensions as early as June 2024, but Chrome browsers deployed in organizations with custom extensions get to live until June 2025. With many (but not all) of the complaints now addressed, Google has resumed the timeline for migrating to Manifest V3. Google started adding more APIs to Manifest V3 to close the functionality gap, including the Offscreen Documents API (for audio playback and other functions that don’t work in Service Workers) and User Scripts API. However, there were so many missing features and complaints that the timeline was paused in December 2022. Google initially planned to stop accepting new Manifest V2 extensions in the Chrome Web Store starting in 2022, then start turning off Manifest V2 extensions in early 2023, culminating in the removal of all Manifest V2 extensions in January 2024. Manifest V3 focuses on the three pillars of that vision: privacy, security, and performance, while preserving and improving our foundation of capability and webbiness.” Google explains in its developer documentation, “Manifest V3 is a major step towards our vision for the extensions platform. It’s also adds support for Promises to many Chrome APIs, which allows developers to write cleaner code, and there are other minor changes as well. Manifest V3 also blocks remotely-hosted code in extensions because it could be used to update extensions outside of the Chrome Web Store safety review process (remote lists or configuration files are still allowed). Many extensions on Manifest V2 require background packages to function, which are essentially browser tabs that are hidden in the background, and Manifest V3 replaces these with service workers that are only activated when needed. Manifest V3 generally has the goal of making browser extensions safer, less resource-intensive, and more aligned with modern web development. In the software development world, this is called a “breaking change.” The last time Google did this was in 2012, with the introduction of Manifest V2, so it’s been a while. It adds some new features for extensions, but it also changes some behaviors and removes a few APIs. Manifest V3 is an updated software platform for Google Chrome extensions, which was first announced as a draft proposal in 2018 and became available to use in January 2021 (with the release of Chrome 88). Subscribe What is Manifest V3, and why does it matter? I’ve been developing Chrome extensions for over a decade, so I can talk about this more in depth than others, but I will be referring to Hill and other developers for the exact specifics on how content blockers are affected. This is my attempt to explain what’s going on with Manifest V3 and content blocking extensions in Google Chrome. ![]() The news lead to headlines like “ Google's Manifest V3 changes will soon disable uBlock Origin on Chrome” and “ Google to Force-Block Ad Blockers - Time to Get Firefox?” This is a pretty technical topic that can get confusing, and using rage bait in headlines has led to a lot of people thinking uBlock Origin and other ad blockers will be completely removed from Chrome, which is not the case. ![]() Google just announced that the transition to Manifest V3 is back on the calendar, and extensions not updated to the new platform will start to be turned off as early as June 2024. Most of the focus has been on the uBlock Origin extension, as developer Raymond Hill stated back in 2019 that the changes “would be the death of uBO and uMatrix.” The update has been controversial, with some changes negatively affecting content blocking extensions (ad blockers). Google has been working on a new platform for Chrome extensions over the past few years, called Manifest V3. 11 min read Credit: Microsoft Designer / DALL-E 3
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