Google will disable Manifest V2 extensions in Chrome 'in the coming months'

Google will automatically disable Manifest V2 extensions in the stable version of Chrome in the coming months. It was already known that Google would stop supporting Manifest V2 extensions, but it was not yet known when that change would be completed.

In a blog post, Google announced that it will show banners with extensions from June 3 in the Canary, Beta and Dev versions of Chrome. Featured extensions will also lose their badge. Google will draw up a list of extensions that are no longer supported and point users to alternatives. Furthermore, the company reports that it has seen a large increase in V3 extensions since the change was announced. More than 85 percent of extensions in the Chrome Web Store that are still regularly maintained have been updated to Manifest V3, Google claims.

Manifest V2 is, among other things, a collection of APIs and rules that control browser extensions, such as ad blockers, can use. It should have been switched off since June 2023, but this was kept being postponed due to migration problems. Ad blocker developers are criticizing V3 because it makes it more difficult for the extensions to block ads. This is due to the declarativeNetRequest API, which should replace the current webRequest API. Google says it has made several changes to accommodate developers.