For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.
What this essentially means is that the tricks and bypasses that were used to keep MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin and others alive will not work any more on Chrome, or at least not for very long. For example the Windows Registry mod that could extend MV2 availability will cease to function after Chromium version 151.
laughs in Firefox/Librewolf
No worries, play store-recaptcha is coming for you too!
?
affects mobile the most obviously… but google’s playbook is to basically have forced telemetry always and enforce integrity of their telemetry, and by extension advertising etc.
https://piunikaweb.com/2026/05/07/google-recaptcha-play-services-requirement/ - this just seems like an ok article for it, I did a simple web search and it came up, but others certainly exist if you dislike the source.
Looking forward to when they remove the old options & force PC users to scan reCAPTCHA QRs:
How are people without phones expected to pass the captcha?
Those sites will be dead to me :)
QR codes are like the popups of days gone by. With incredibly few exceptions, I refuse to scan them. They are so easy to redirect for nefarious purposes, and you can’t easily inspect the url to know, assuming thats something you even do. Also my phone case covers the camera and it’s a bitch to get open so I’m very choosy with what gets camera time.
On my phone I use URLCheck (available in f-droid). You set it as your default browser app, but instead of opening a browser, it opens a popup where you can see the URL, and use some useful tools like removing tracking parameters or automatically rewriting x.com to xcancel.com. The rewritten URL can then just be forwarded to your actual browser (or whatever app is set up to handle that particular URL).
I still won’t actually open random qr code URLs though, especially not ones from google.
happy to not be affected
In my phone (Google pixel) I mainly use Firefox for browsing. While Chrome is still the default browser. At some point I’ll change default also to Firefox. I didn’t do this because I’m not logged into some apps there.
People keep mentioning Firefox but fail to realize that Google, as the sole sponsor of Mozilla Corporation (not to be confused with Mozilla Foundation), can just kindly ask for Firefox to follow suit and gimp itself, just like it did before with a move to webextensions. Gotta admit it, Google has won the web, what they say (eventually) goes.
then we’ll move again, like we did with chrome. this game of cat and mouse is easy to keep up and really only serves to harm these companys in the long run.
Except they aren’t moving anymore.
I think Google finally trapped most of the web’s population, for good.
That’s theirchoice is all I’ll say, I know plenty went to fire for for these reasons, it stands to reason they’ll do it again.
Cue the Brave shills “recommending” to switch to Brave in 5…4…3…
Wait what’s wrong with Brave?
I would argue that if you’re choosing between chrome and brave, brave is still better.
Sure. Probably. But why are we choosing between Chrome and Brave?
For a lot of people, it’s an easy transition.
DDG, Vivaldi, etc. harder transitions.
Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.
I’m just saying perfect is the enemy of good.
Firefox for my parents would result in calls every 3 days for sites that aren’t working right.
Sorry, what? If they are so tech-illiterate that they have to call you and ask why the website is not working, then what kind of web sites are they visiting?
Been using FF since 2022 and the only sites that wont work are the ones that utilizes HID. Are your parents trying to flash custom firmware for their phones though browser every third day?
Good for you. I’ve been in tech for over 16 years and FF absolutely does not work well on ~25% of websites.
Wanna link those websites so we can see?
Firefox and its derivatives (and Safari - sorry Apple users) are the only browsers not using Google’s Blink web engine these days - at least until Ladybird is released.
Despite the Mozilla Foundation’s many stupid decisions, Firefox (and Safari) is starting to look like the only thing stopping Google from completely controlling the internet.
Why not servo? Iirc, they already have a release.
Yet another reason to switch to brave…oh wait…brave is built on chromium so…will adblocker of brave also cease to exist? Will it get blocked too? Vivaldi ad blockers may stop too as afaik its based on opera engine
Yet another reason to switch to brave
There is no good reasons to use brave. It’s based on chromium, propped up by suspicious individuals, uses predatory marketing tactics and have an history of not caring very much for privacy in favor of hijacking and inserting referrals. And that’s only the most prominent issues. Their last stunt of willingly adding annoying features and offering people to pay to remove them should tell you all you need to know.
Without those, what can you recommend to someone who is not tech-savvy but willing to learn?
If Chromium becomes incompatible with privacy, the only real and broadly accepted alternative is FireFox. Which implementation, and as always in these kinds of discussions, that depends on your threat model: On desktop, I am very happy with LibreWolf. Mullvad Browser is also great, especially with Mullvad VPN, though it breaks pages a little more often than LibreWolf. On Android, I am quite happy with IronFox.
Don’t worry, there’s still hope: use Librewolf or Brave
Helium is a Chromium based browser that will still support ad blockers, whose devs (unlile the CEO of Brave) seem like good peeps - https://helium.computer/
Besides Librewolf, Waterfox is also a good Firefox/Gecko basd option - https://waterfox.com/
Vivaldi too
this aged like milk - RIP vivaldi
For the record, you can re-enable it by toggling it but, yeah, it’s not the best.
On the other hand, the built in tracker replicates most of UBO, especially if you enable Easylist or add your own filterlist subscriptions.
Thanks, I’ll look into the lists I guess. My main complaint is the element zapper however!
Yeah, that’s definitely one area where it lacks. When you do add subscriptions, it will tell you which rules didn’t match too (at least a count of them) but I’ve found MOST carry over.
(I do go between Librewolf/Firefox and Vivaldi so I’m not married to Vivaldi for the record)
I like the messaging I see from Vivaldi’s ceo, and it looks like it has a nice feature set, but they still keep some parts of its code closed source, so I don’t choose it for myself.
Oh look all the “chrome but in a different outfit” browsers are doing the same terrible shit? What a shocker, no one could have predicted that the many many things all on the same base where actuality just fake competition.
Firefox has webserial support now. I no longer need anything chromium. Let them rot.
Where oh where is my PWA…?
How about bluetooth support? Has that been fixed yet?
Why the downvotes? I have 4 machines at work, and none of them can send code to a LEGO Spike Hub over bluetooth in Firefox but works perfectly fine in Chrome.
