Edge Follows Chrome in Shutting the Door on Old Ad Blockers

Microsoft has announced that it is ending support for the Manifest V2 extension platform in the Edge browser. In doing so, the company is following the lead of Google, which disabled MV2 in Chrome earlier this year. The biggest loss for users is the popular ad blocker uBlock Origin, along with other extensions built on the old architecture.

By Microsoft's own account, the scale of the problem is modest: only 58 MV2 extensions “with any noticeable usage” remain in the Edge add-ons store, and just three of them lack a version for the new MV3 platform.

What users should do

For those who still rely on such extensions, Microsoft suggests switching to alternatives — for example, the lightweight uBlock Origin Lite. Another option is to switch browsers. Opera continues to support existing MV2 extensions and promises to do so “for as long as it is technically reasonable.” There's also Firefox.

The shutdown timeline

As early as this month, the remaining MV2 extensions will begin to be “gradually disabled by default,” though users will be warned in advance and pointed to the recommended MV3 versions where they are available. The changes will first affect the Canary, Dev, and Beta channels, and will then gradually make their way to the stable version.

Microsoft expects to complete the migration of all regular users to MV3 by the end of 2026. Managed enterprise devices won't be affected by the mass shutdown at first — for businesses, MV2 support will be wound down in early 2027.

As a reminder, it was precisely MV3's restrictions on content filtering that caused classic blockers to lose some of their functionality: the new platform noticeably curtails extensions' ability to intervene in network requests. That is exactly why the transition, presented by browser makers as a matter of security and performance, is seen by part of the community as a blow to ad-blocking tools.

Source: The Verge