Google will disable classic extensions in Chrome in the coming months

I suppose older extensions that aren't maintained will not stop working right?

 

All MV2 extensions will be disabled.
Those who have activated the corporate policy will have another year then these users will also have their MV2 extensions disabled.

However, Mozilla has also stated that they will continue to support MV2 extensions for at least another year,then they will reserve the right to decide:

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2024/03/13/manifest-v3-manifest-v2-march-2024-update/

I bet Mozilla will deprecate MV2 extensions by June 2026.

 

We'll see. If uBO doesn't work anymore that would be the death of Firefox. So if Mozilla really moves to MV3 they will still support WebRequest or provide an alternative API that works in MV3. Hence, MV3 in Firefox will be different from MV3 in Chrome. They can't take the liberty to do anything else.

 

There exists a GPO for Edge which results in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
"ExtensionManifestV2Availability" dword

* Default (0) = browser decide
* Disable (1) =disabled
* Enable (2) = enabled
* EnableForForcedExtensions (3) = only for forced extensions

but i think that the google store, and ms store, will drop mv2 extensions one by one now, so its recommended to create backups of extensions to use them offline, means from folder, packed or unpacked with developer mode.

see also edge://policy/ for all applied policies.

 

Thanks for this. I may look into it for folks at work.

 

to add myself:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge (system wide)
or
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge (user only)

 

I moved over to the paid AdGuard + AGVPN and have been very pleased with the blocking.

 

This is troubling, unless these extensions don't get crippled by MV3, like adblockers. I just saw on the Vivaldi forum that someone said you can apply some kind of registry tweak, to keep MV2 extensions working on Vivaldi. And hopefully Vivaldi can still somehow support MV2 extensions.

 

Okay, I'm going to display my ignorance here. How can I tell if any of my extensions are M2? I see uBlock Origin in that first link above. I don't like the sound of that at all.

 

To extend the support in Vivaldi till June 2025 (reg file):

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Vivaldi]
"ExtensionManifestV2Availability"=dword:00000002

 

Yes, that's helpful. Probably half of my extensions are M2. This really sucks. I've been fighting it, but it may be time to abandon Chrome for Edge; I'm tired of all of Google's BS.

 

Edge will follow Google in the transition to MV3...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-chromium/developer-guide/manifest-v3
Timeline is not yet set in stone.

 

True, but there was a registry hack for Edge posted above. Maybe that will no longer work when Edge decides to follow suit, I don't know. I disabled Chrome updates, at least for now to buy a little time (hopefully). From stuff I've been reading, this change will only effect new versions of Chrome, starting tomorrow. But I could be mistaken.

 

I only use 4 extensions in Edge.
Only uBlock Origin is MV2.
The other 3 extensions are already at MV3.

 

A similar 'hack' can be applied to Chrome:

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome]
"ExtensionManifestV2Availability"=dword:00000002

https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#ExtensionManifestV2Availability

 

That's great, I'll try it.

 

Edge isn't really that different from Chrome.
Vivaldi, even when using same underlying engine, tries to differentiate to some extent with their limited resources, while Edge seems like drop-in Chrome replacement, recently with some GenAI stuff and maybe tweaks to security layers

 

OK cool thanks, I guess this is what I saw on the Vivaldi forum.

What I don't understand is how it will work with MV2 extensions that are not maintained anymore. Surely, those extensions won't stop working just because they get removed from the Chrome Web Store? After all, those extensions are all locally installed. Or perhaps someone can figure out a way to make them work via Developer mode.

 

As I understand it, it's based on the Chrome version. New versions won't support M2, except by adding the new value to the registry which has been posted. However, Chrome may not allow that in future versions. For now I've disabled both Chrome and Edge updates until I see what is going to happen.

 

I know Edge and Chrome are the same under the hood; however, in my experience, Edge works much better on some sites like YouTube, Amazon, Ebay, and others. Chrome stalls, won't finish loading pages, and always asks if I want to remain on the page or exit. Edge works smooth and fast. I don't understand it because I have mostly the same extension in both. That's been my experience at least; others might not have the same experience.

 

What I meant is that I hope that Chrome's Web Store can't disable MV2 extensions from remote. I believe currently all of the 10 extensions that I use are MV2 based. But I do think must are still being developed, so they will probably switch to MV3 and they will hopefully not be limited in functionality.

The biggest problem is of course adblockers, I mean uBlock Lite really isn't good enough. That's why I have asked Vivaldi to develop a more advanced built-in adblocker, because it shouldn't be affected by MV3. But so far it's still pretty basic, they don't give any priority to it, which I think is quite odd.

 

the common for all chromium based will be that they need a source for mv2 extensions. the switch may help out until 2025, but beyond? is the code for mv2 removed? i think so.
thats why i mentioned to backup of current used extensions.
and i think there will be a collection of mv2 extensions somewhere like it was for legacy extensions for firefox. watch out.

currently some of chrome mv3 extensions are not usable in firefox, no serviceworker, but they are working on it. although the sw is no criteria for mv3 extensions, the mozilla store already contain mv3 extensions.

 

Well, based my experience in the past, they can and do disable them remotely. The question is will a person be able to reenable them. It may depend on the reason Google gives for disabling. If they flag M2 as malware it may be a lost cause.