Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other Manifest V2-based extensions in Edge
Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other Manifest V2-based extensions in Edge
Microsoft is now in the process of turning off Manifest V2-based extensions in Edge, such as uBlock Origin. However, not everything is lost at this point.
The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: "This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it." Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking "Manage extension" and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).
At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft's documentation, however, still says "TBD," so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of "unexpected changes" coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.
Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge's stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store
Microsoft is a spineless removed.
Why is it that when I see removed, it's always from lemmy.ml, is that the only instance with the filter enabled
Nooo, it is browser on my workplace! How should I work efficiently without uBlock!?!?
Tell IT and your boss how your productivity tanked since edge disabled uBlock.
So, unironically, I do plan to request Firefox with uBlock Origin as a reasonable accomodation for my ADHD if I'm not able to use it at a job in the future. Banner ads are genuinely distracting and I have a real disability that makes them worse for me.
Click on all the ads and install all the malware. That will teach them.
My work insists on using it too. Fuck knows why, maybe it's a security thing? And my personal laptop is constantly nagging me to use edge - it could be the best browser ever and I would still avoid it just because of the pushiness.
Less browsing of news articles?
I work in research and development, I have to constantly search the web for stuff
Right, you don't need extensions, because you don't need customization, because what you need is what we the corp say you need.
I think Web as it exists is a failed branch of evolution.
A networked (solved) hypertext (solved) document (solved) system - yes. A networked hypertext system with one or two unbelievably complex clients, where only enormous corps have enough resources to change something, - no. One can add steps - E2E encryption, dynamic services, scripts, all not requiring a monolithic piece of nonsense.
BTW, those hating Flash, I hope, do realize that its proper, paradigm-abiding replacement would be a FOSS plugin with similar goal, not what we have.
I feel similarly. Javascript was made to add some functionality to documents and now we're basically running Doom in a word professor. I don't know what a better system would look like, but I'd draw a line between document-type pages and pages that you want to do more on.
people use edge? it downloads itself onto your computer without permission.
Honestly, it's pretty easy to dunk on edge. But it's based on the same chromium browser. They have excellent customer support. I have in the past submitted bug reports and they have followed up. Until now, they had pretty good privacy and options in their settings. With this v2 / v3 situation, I will have to reassess all that.
It didn't for me on Linux :^)
I use it on my laptop because it doesn't nuke my laptop's battery like all other browsers. So it's a bit of a shame.
It integrates very well with your M365 you need at work, and it saves a ton of time when people can use SSO to basically get everything up and running immediately on a new laptop. Including bookmarks and passwords.
By default I install unblock on any user machine I touch because it's equal parts user experience and security.
Firefox also has SSO integration with M365! Last I tested it it was less clean than Microsoft's but it does exist and work the last time I used it
Edit: just tested on a fresh install of Firefox and it worked perfectly. Checked the checkbox under Settings>Privacy and Security for "Allow Windows single sign-in for Microsoft, work, and school accounts" then navigated to my account.microsoft.com and it immediately signed me in (and appeared to be faster than on Edge‽)
At work. Corporate web based software doesn't always play nice in firefox.
yea, our comp uses only chrome or Microsoft outlook. even my old state Uni used outlook.
It's slowly turning, too. Start looking for something else.
It's almost like this not-for-profit, for-profit subsidiary thing is a cancer (or at least, my selection bias of late thinks so).
Can someone ELI5 why a foundation can't develop these products directly, with a for-profit subsidiary? Is there something forbidden about rasing revenue for a not-for-profit via product sales? Would this even fix anything?
Sam Reichfox
The only way to learn, is by playing
Not for much more, it seems.
Lil arms!
Firefox time
I use Firefox for most things, but Google Meet maxes out all my CPUs if I use Firefox. Any kind of screen sharing kills it. Suggestions on how I can get video encoding working greatly appreciated... Intel Xe graphics.
firefox is starting to enshittify, LIBREWOLF, or another might be better.
Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.
'nough said!
Does not elicit the image of iron.
Oh, it's libre.
Perfect time to check out AdGuard Home. Trivial to install locally. Probably took less than 3 minutes to install and get it operating. Hardest part was updating my router config. (Goddamn Google WiFi!)
Then you can focus on getting a better browser. Support libre software and check out LibreWolf.
Librewolf on desktop Mull on Android
Mull is not maintained anymore. However there is a fork called IronFox.
I don't suggest Librewolf for the plebians though.
It comes with very aggressive anti-fingerprinting and privacy features.
For people in [email protected] that's less of a problem but I wouldn't suggest it to my family members.
Regular Android Firefox has Ublock origins as well.
DivestOS has ceased maintaining Mull if I remember correctly. I use Ironfox on Android now.
Just in case you needed another reason not to use Edge.
Chrome* or Chromium based browsers*
Who fucking uses edge?
90% of people and corporations are either using Edge or Chrome and since there's essentially no difference between the two they are equally bad. We're back to a browser mono-culture, just like in the bad old days of Internet Explorer.
Uuuuh.. being a web dev in those days.. You essentially first built support for proper browsers, then it was time to make things look and work as they should (or close to it) in IE.
Did you know Wayne Gretzky and his brother hole the record for highest scoring brother duo in the NHL?
That comment reads the same way.
On the rare occasion I want to stream movies while on my PC at 1080p, because most online movie services will only stream 1080p to Edge. Some times Chrome will be allowed to stream 1080p but it's pretty hit or miss in my experience. On another note, basically no streaming services will stream movies to you in 4k on a PC, I've also found most streaming apps on my phone won't give me 4k either, you can only really get 4k streaming to a smart TV... it's pretty ridiculous.
My company has blocked all other web browsers, so lots of us sadly.
probably wanted to monitor your every move, because the others one might shield your identity.
Noobs who like to live on the edge
Sticking it to Sundar the creep while getting in bed with Satya the creep
My workplace configures edge and chrome by default, were very office365 integrated and support chrome for some dates specific thing.
Now i am privileged with local admin powers so i have firefox. Still the integrations with edge run deep so i still have to use it lots of times. There are plans for copilot which is one of the dummest llm bots (opinion) but is again catered to edge.
I will however never use chrome (anymore). Google was the second tech giant i dropped after facebook. They cannot redeem themselves for destroying the web (opinion). I rarely use search engines anymore but i rather use bing and bing sucks. (duckduck is also based on bing)
Sorry for the rant, but that was relieving. Arch btw.
At least Bing pays you to use them, so don't feel bad
People.
What a bunch of bastards.
I do when shitty devs don’t test in firefox and things are broken.
Corps. All of the bells and whistles it has ties into the corps tenant which includes isolation of things like sync’d profiles, seamless sso, favorites, extensions, etc
Since it’s all under the tenant, all of that data is subject to the same privacy and policies the corp and MS agreed to, which makes it easy to work with other companies that have their own client policy requirements.
MS also makes it easy to control and harden all of their products including Edge using policy controls from a single UI.
You can’t do any of this with Firefox without extra effort.
I like it's pdf viewer interface. It's less cluttered than Adobe, and it's markup is a little better than Firefox.
My 73 years old father
People actually use that thing?
Edge is actually pretty decent. Native vertical tabs, M365 SSO integration, native multiple profiles with quick switching, preinstalled on your work computer and will work with anything that "only works in chrome"
Obviously this is ignoring the obvious downsides such as assisting Microsoft's search, browser and platform monopolies, tracking data sent to Microsoft, etc. etc.
It's the number one browser to download other browsers, so yeah, sure!
Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?
Worth a look if you're a web power-user / developer sort of person
Zen's glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.
I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it
Yeah, viewing a link without opening it is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
You just viewed a link without opening it.
I was concerned, but it's not Wiki style.
It's just a fancy skin for modal windows. It pops open over 70% of the screen front and center.
Personally. I find tabs more useful, but haven't fully switched over from Firefox yet so I haven't looked into disabling it.
Nonsense, you're not opening them! You're fetching them for viewing. It's totally different!
Honestly this has been my daily driver for the past 6 months or so.
I really like it. The aesthetics are really modern, while still maintaining all the things I like about firefox.
Why is there a sidebar for tabs? That seems wasteful for all the screen space it takes.
Edit: From what I see it tries to do everything that is a job of a window manager/desktop environment. There are various solutions to have workspaces, etc. that you can use globally, so I don't understand why would anyone use this, unless you are on locked system like Windows or Mac.
Firefox based. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I'mma give this a try.
I use love the mod feature
I've looked it up and apparently there's a problem where if you open a new window with any amount of tabs and close it last, you will lose all your tabs on the first window. It's a big no for me, because I already had to restore last opened windows in Firefox many times, and I am pretty sure you previously could just press
CTRL+SHIFT+Tand it did reopen them, although I might misremember things.
Ok maybe off topic, why does a web browser have to be one of the most complicated software artifacts on earth? So expensive to write and maintain that only a few orgs with huge developer resources can do it?
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we've learned since html/css was invented? A standard that a few developers could implement in a few weeks using off the shelf libraries. Rather than reimplement every bizarre historical detail in html/css, have a new UI layout system that's simple and consistent, and perhaps more powerful.
Basically browsers are big because they are operating systems for web hosted applications with huge attack surfaces and lots of legacy compatibility requirements amassed over 3 decades.
A rewrite isn't the answer. Putting limits on browser functionality is. JavaScript was the turning point IMHO.
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we've learned since html/css was invented?
Probably a lot better. The difficult, and expensive, part is getting everyone to migrate over to this new standard, not because it'd be unfeasible but because companies don't want to spend any time or money on things that they don't think will make them profit.
What we'd need is, for example, the EU realizing that Google's attempted monopoly on the internet is dangerous and requiring a certain standard for private consumer-facing websites to get the ball rolling.
If you don't want to be compatible with what millions of websites are written in (because that's the complicated part), you now have to convince all of them to invest lots of money to migrate to your new web standard... Good luck...
You don't have to replace the html web. If a new system was sufficiently fun to create with, people might use it for all kinds of cool new projects. Kind of like Flash used to be. You'd go there for a specific thing you heard about.
A new web free of cruft might turn out to be cheaper to develop for, and that might appeal to the corporate types. Maybe useful for intranet type apps where the browser is specified anyway and you have a captive audience.
Probably a lot like Gemini web. No, not the AI bauble.
I feel like this sort of thing should be more modular. Maybe on Linux we could in theory have multiple packages that could have different implementations and the browser UI would just use the underlying packages with their specific extras on top.
That would also align well with the Unix philosophy of each component “doing one thing well” and composing small tools to achieve complex tasks.
Splitting things add a different level of complexity (public APIs, deprecations, different versions, etc.) but it would make the web much more free, since we could have different individuals maintaining different packages and no organization would have too much control over the web.
I believe this is possible because we have very complex stuff such as entire Desktop Environments on Linux that are made up of multiple packages and each package just do a well defined thing and build on top of each other to create a “whole” experience in the end.
Microsoft Edge is literally Google Chrome button replaced with Microsoft Features/Spyware
Lol Microsoft really using their browser market share effectively
oh look at that. It's 'chromium based browsers are garbage o'clock.'
I was on Netscape in the 90s, I got on Firefox when it was still Phoenix/Firebird, and I haven't left once. You've been a good friend.
(Though I do like Palemoon a lot since I love the pre Quantum and pre WebExtensions days).
Did both Edge users complain?
Unfortunately Edge is the 2nd most popular browser, with double the market share of Firefox.
Is not Adblock Plus baked into Edge?
AdBlock Plus has been a sell-out for many years now. Only trust uBlock Origin.
No.
Vivaldi still supports V2 Manifest (including ublock Origin) until July, I believe. Brave too, I think.
edit: I find it fascinating how mentions of Vivaldi (or other browsers) always gets so many downvotes. Why do downvoters care so much about browsers they don't use?
Because we want a more permanent solution than one that's only going to last until Summer. What's even the point of switching if you just gotta do it again soon?
Edit: Winter too. I apologize to our friends on the southern hemisphere.
Wait, is that all? Because its not a permanent forever fix for Edge users its downvote worthy?
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Maybe Vivaldi or Brave users are reading this article thinking their Manifest v2 support is ending at the same time as Edge? It isn't and I'm letting those users know.
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Maybe there is some critical functionality someone needs in a Chrome based browser and they'll take Manifest v2 support wherever they can get it for as long as they can?
Do you think your specific situation, and therefore your specific desired solution, is the only one in the world that exists?
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I'd direct people to Firefox, but Mozilla is doing some weird shit right now and I just can't. And the forks are always with some weird limitations or issues. Why does it all have to be shit these days?
I had a feeling this would happen. I have to use Google services for a lot of things at work and Edge works fine with them. Firefox usually does okay, but not always. And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
Can any Chromium-based browser refuse to turn on V3 or is it too baked-in without forking the entire project?
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you're talking about the most recent news about the Terms of Service, that is a gross misreading of what they said.
That's not what that Firefox thing was about at all.
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you're talking about the recent news, that's not what the updated privacy notice says.
Mozilla will be adding opt in LLM functionality to Firefox. It can use third party LLM providers. The privacy has been updated to say "btw, any info you give to this LLM will be processed by the LLM by a third party." I.e. the LLM provider has the data once you send it to them.
I imagine so, but the technical burden is at risk of growing over time as the upstream chromium may significantly deviate from or remove some of the functionality.
IIRC Vivaldi and Brave promised to prolong it for a year.
Test-driving them both now.
Me and my colleagues in tech call it the 'Granny Browser'.
Either use Firefox/UBlock Origin or Brave. Brave's native adblock is good enough you don't need add-ons.
I dont know why people keep recommending brave.
its a fucking scummy fucking browser that has a history of stealing money, hijacking referal codes (like honey just got in deep trouble over), installing unnecessary software without consent and more.
Are you implying the crypto-bro browser with connections to a billionaire that runs the largest corporate intelligence agency in the world may not be the best choice of browser? That's not the sort of attitude that generates value for the shareholders.
My friends who are less tech literate swear by brave. I think it's the way they market their browser... Some of Brave's core audience don't want to install a third party extension for adblock (either they don't like third party or they just don't know they can do it in other browsers)
Also on opening a new tab, they show the stats of how much data they saved and how much ads it blocked. Some people like seeing the number grow.
All this is my speculation. There may be some other reason for it being this popular.
Because it's a good product.
They really only recommend it because the average joe doesn't need to install UBO on it, I also removed it after the VPN service controversy.
Why would anyone use anything but Brave anyway? Brave will still support manifest v2 shit.
Brave will support it until it becomes inconvenient or difficult to do so as the Chromium base keeps moving. The more time goes on, the more work it'll be for Brave to maintain this forked functionality.
My guess is at some point Brave will discontinue V2 and say "just use the Brave inbuilt adblocker".
Regardless, Brave have their own skeletons in the closet... crypto, the Windows installer installing other Brave applications during browser install without consent (that one is straight up malware behaviour. Reminds me of the days of software installing Internet Explorer toolbars without consent), injecting their affiliate links when nobody asked, a CEO who donated money to homophobic causes more than once.
E: my above theory was correct, sort of:
We will keep Manifest v2 for as long as it's still available in Chromium. We expect to drop support in June 2025, but we may maintain it longer or be forced to drop support for it sooner, depending on the precise nature of the changes to the code.
They are only committing to enabling the disabled Mv2 code in Chromium. Once it's removed altogether, Brave probably won't bother keeping it and maintaining it. Basically, if you want Mv2, only Firefox and its derivatives are committed to keeping it.
Fair, I love Brave too much tho. And I don't care about Manifest V2. So, for me personally its great.
None of these small browsers can make significant changes to the original project. A browser nowadays is a super complex bloated thing that requires too much resources to maintain. If even M$ abandoned their engine to go with Chromium (because it was probably costing them a lot of resources to keep compatibility with the evolving standards, security fixes etc.) what hope is there for small companies? Arguably Apple’s Safari has significant differences compared to Chrome, but we’re talking about Apple…
People thinking this is a solution are gonna get disappointed eventually. For now, Firefox is the only alternative product that has been maintained for decades.
it's very brave to say something like that here
True. Most of the negative comments about Chromium here are really obtuse. Looks like people feel the need to gain imaginary internet points by praising a mediocre browser made by a misguided Corp. such as Mozilla.
Save your time and avoid replying here. I wont' reply back. I'm not interested in arguing. Just block me if you disagree and go on with your life.
It's nice to use a browser which doesn't depend of extensions to block ads.
Oh no, like I ever use Edgeplorer.
Ok
