Mozilla reaffirms it won’t remove Manifest v2 support from Firefox
Mozilla has officially reiterated that it’s going to keep offering support for both Manifest v2 and Manifest v3 extensions in Firefox. Google is removing support for Manifest v2 from Chrome, and with it a feature called blockingWebRequest that is used by ad blockers like uBlock Origin. Google’s replacement for that feature is more restrictive and less capable, and as such, uBlock Origin no longer works on Chrome.
Firefox, however, will continue supporting both blockingWebRequest and declarativeNetRequest — giving developers more flexibility and keeping powerful privacy tools available to users.
↫ Scott DeVaney and Ed Sullivan
There’s a lot to be worried about when it comes to Mozilla’s future, but on this matter, at least, they’re taking the correct stance that genuinely puts users first. It’s no surprise Google is using Manifest v3 as an excuse to nerf adblocking in Chrome, since adblocking cuts into Google’s most important source of revenue. If you’re still using Chrome, this alone should be more than enough reason to switch to Firefox, so you can retain the most optimal form of adblocking.
The various Chromium skins will most likely all lose support for Manifest v2 as well once the code is actually removed from Chromium in June 2025. Vivaldi announced as such, and unless any of the other Chromium skins out there decide to fork Chromium and maintain their own version, you can expect all of them to lose support for Manifest v2 around the same date. Safari is harder to pin down, since Apple doesn’t make any statements about future product. For now, it supports both Manifest v2 and v3, and I don’t really see a reason why Apple would remove v2 support.