Chrome will soon disable old Manifest V2 extensions

Google’s plan to modernize desktop Chrome extensions is entering its final stages as Manifest V2 tools will stop working by early next year. 

With Manifest V3, Google wants to make extensions more secure, private, and performant. The initial 2019 approach, however, was criticized for impacting ad blockers. In response to the feedback, more functionality was introduced to the spec, including support for user scripts and an increased “number of rulesets for declarativeNetRequest, allowing extensions to bundle up to 330,000 static rules and dynamically add a further 30,000.” Web Store updates for ad blockers will now see faster review times.

As of today, “over 85% of actively maintained extensions in the Chrome Web Store are running Manifest V3.” Google says the “top content filtering extensions” offer Manifest V3 versions, including AdBlock, Adblock Plus, AdGuard, and uBlock Origin.

Starting on June 3, users of Manifest V2 extensions will see a warning banner in chrome://extensions about how support is ending. This applies to those on the Chrome Beta, Dev and Canary channels. The Web Store will also remove “Featured” badges from Manifest V2 extensions. 

This will “gradually” be followed by Manifest V2 extensions getting disabled. That said:

For a short time after the extensions are disabled, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on, but over time, this toggle will go away as well.

When this happens, Chrome will direct users to the Web Store for Manifest V3 alternatives.

The final deprecation will come to stable Chrome in the coming months with the “goal of completing the transition by the beginning of next year.”