Google Chrome’s up-and-coming new extension manifest, Manifest V3, is slated to replace its predecessor for good next year. The company has announced that it will discontinue Manifest V2 in June 2024, remotely deactivating extensions that still rely on it and preventing installations via the Chrome Web Store. Manifest V3 has faced criticism from adblock developers in particular, complaining that the new specification is too limiting, but the company has made some amends.
Inits blog post, Google explains that it improved Manifest V3 in key ways to mitigate some of the problems developers see with it. The company talks about improved content filtering support with more generous limits, allowing for bigger block lists and rule sets. There are also enhancements for extensions that rely on background playback, better control over service worker lifetimes, and a new User Scripts API.
After pausing the transition to Manifest V3 last December due to huge backlash from developers, Google now seems confident that it’s made the right tweaks. The company wants to phase out the previous specification, Manifest V2, in June 2024 with Chrome 127 and newer. At the same time, Google says that it will roll out the change gradually, so some people might be lucky enough to keep their extensions for a little longer.
Google encourages developers to make the switch to Manifest V3 as soon as possible, all while saying that “we’ve seen support for Manifest V3 increase significantly among the extension developer community.” The company features AdGuard in its blog post, which it worked with to further improve Manifest V3 to make it more suitable for tracker and ad blocking. AdGuard goes as far as saying that it sees “cautious optimism” about the change at this point.
Other initiatives still aren’t satisfied with Manifest V3.Talking to The Verge, digital privacy nonprofit EFF says that Google’s changes are helpful, but: “The big problem remains the same: if extensions can’t innovate, users lose and trackers win… We now all depend on Google to keep evolving the API to keep up with advertisers and trackers.”
The announcement to push Manifest V3 to developers and users also coincides with Google’s own crusade against adblockers. The company has started retaliating against adblockers on YouTube more aggressively, stopping those who are detected to use these tools from accessing videos altogether as long as the blockers remain active. In fact, YouTube’s approach is so aggressive thatit is facing privacy lawsuits in the EU.
