With the introduction of Manifest V3, Google’s latest extensions software, some Chrome extensions have been removed from its Web Store. This includes the popular ad blocker uBlock. However, for most removed extensions, the easiest way to get them back is just to turn them back on again.
Today, Manifest V3 rolled out in an attempt to implement “best practices for Chrome extensions”. This is what led to uBlock Origin and other extensions being disabled overnight.
If you are a long-time user of uBlock Origin, instead of removing the extension when prompted by Chrome, you can click to manage your extensions and simply turn it on again. This morning, I woke up, spotted that some of the extensions I use for work had been disabled, and simply flicked them back on again. I didn’t even have to click to manage them, as they had been turned off from the standard extension tab.
If you didn’t use uBlock Origin before Manifest V3 came in, AdBlock is still allowed and available to download.
uBlock Origin has been made unavailable because it didn’t make changes compliant with Manifest V3’s rollout. uBlock Origin Lite is a version of the software for Manifest V3, but developer Raymond Hill says it is is a “a pared-down version” that’s had to “sacrifice many features”.
According to uBlock Origin, under Manifest V3, the “API is limited, and extensions are encouraged to use the new declarativeNetRequest API instead. This new API allows for predefined rules but lacks some of the dynamic capabilities that uBlock Origin utilizes for advanced content blocking.”
AdBlock, back in 2022, announced it would be making changes to be suitable for V3, which explains why one ad-blocking service is allowed and one isn’t. With this change to AdBlock, users got more limited filter lists, to turn off certain kinds of ads on websites. The ability to report and block ads instantly was also removed.
If you’re wondering what Manifest V3 is all about, the Manifest V3 changes section explains four areas of improvement. The first is a move to service workers, which means that the background page running extensions hogs up fewer resources. The second is that extensions with remotely hosted code are no longer allowed, as they present “security risks”. The third is that changes are being made to network requests, which proxied “all network traffic to provide filtering capabilities, which came at a performance and privacy cost.”
Finally, the last section simply says “other changes” and links out to information on Google’s APIs and updates it recommends making to extension code.
Google has a developer section explaining how to migrate extensions to Manifest V3 and even shows how to flag to Google that changes have been made for Manifest V3. Though users can still manually enable many extensions, there’s a chance some of those hit in the change will come back with developer updates if they comply with Manifest V3.