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
Corpo banned it for compatibility with crap code apparently
FF support is getting worse and worse though.
Barely any of the sites I use for work support FF.
Laugh all you want but shit is a bit fucked.
Ladybird is our last best hope and its barely a glimmer.
Fun fact: many sites that say that they don’t support firefox lie, their sites usually support it but they never tested it or they deem firefox “less secure” or some bullshit, but with an useragent spoofer, they will work
(Not all sites ofc)
Wait, what sites don’t work in firefox?
Yet to see one.
I’ve answered this so many times.
Banks, my uni, accounting software I use at work.
Its a well acknowledged and much discussed fact that the web is buggy with ff.
Wack. Its usually chrome that shits the bed. Or its because their app cant tolerate an adblocker.
Doesn’t match up with my lived experience. Sorry for your loss.
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:
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.
How are people without phones expected to pass the captcha?
The MV3 support in firefox is even stricter than in Chrome. I found that chrome will let you sidestep CSP to make an HTTP request. Firefox won’t.
I don’t understand what you found, but firefox still supports the web request blocking API for Mv3 extensions, which is what ublock needs.
I was debugging one of my favourite extensions this week to figure out why it didn’t work on firefox. It hadn’t been updated in years, so something changed in firefox in the last few months.
I assume the Chrome version still works. I’m not installing it.
if it hadn’t been updated in years then it will be an Mv2 extension, irrelevant to discussion of Mv3 strictness.
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.
When will marketing people figure out our generation views ads as hostile, non-consensual, and unwanted? They are a negative way to introduce us to your product/service. I actively avoid things with obnoxious ads. Native, old spice, liberty mutual, all of those brands the first thing that comes to mind is the negative experience of an invasive advertisement I never fucking asked for.
Pretty sure all generations feel the same way.
It doesn’t matter how we view them as long as they work.
Ads aren’t always there to get you to buy something specific. In fact, an ad you don’t interact with is a better ad because they don’t have to pay for click-through.
You don’t want to buy brand A because they have ads, so you buy brand B instead, but both widgets are owned by the same holding company. Or they’re made in the same factory. Or they use the same components. Or they have the same shareholders. Any way you slice it, the same rich assholes are getting your money.
The goal of the Ads is to put a bug in your head and get you to buy something.
And that’s just the Ads. The tracking is also (increasingly primarily) about political manipulation and surveillance.
What generation?
Except we are not customers, and it’s the customers that are important. I’s like cows asking between themselves when will the butcher realize that they do not like being killed for meat.
Butcher knows, but butcher doesn’t sell comfort to cows, he sells meat to customers.
Apparently not, as ads keep selling.
I hate to sound so cynical, but many folks are gullible. They’ll trust a flashy ad because it looks nice to them, and gives them a positive emotional response, and then internalize that judgement as their own decision (so when someone comes to challenge it, they take it personally).
It’s not just old people living in another time, either. I’ve watched teenagers and young adults trust obviously-sponsored influencers like they’re friends. Or wear brands as status symbols.
They’re too busy milking the boomers for now (and even then, the smart ones also despise ads already)
Pretty fucked up considering how much malware and scammy bullshit come though ads.
Yep, sorry but not sorry. Advertisements aren’t safe. The industry has been ruined by bad actors and it’s a shame, but also not my problem.
I worked in ads only a few months and learned how fucked that industry was. They’re basically given license to just run scripts in your browser, sucking as much info as they can. The fact that it hasn’t been regulated to hell is shocking, and truly a failure of all leaders.
I see a lot of comments (justifiably) touting firefox’s superiority… but the performance difference is night and day.
My main pc has very weak hardware, and my browser is the most resource intensive application I run. In my environment, I can’t leave firefox open with other heavy apps running simultaneously, but I can leave chrome open.
I’ve used firefox for decades in the past, but the gap is huge and it doesn’t look like Mozilla will make the engine changes necessary to close it. Idk if things have changed, but I remember when they axed the Servo team.
I’ve been using Ungoogled Chromium and I’m hoping this doesn’t affect me for a while… but if I have to choose between ads and closing my browser to run heavy apps, I guess I’ll be reinstalling firefox.
Performance night and day? I don’t think so lol. I daily Firefox. It works fine.
And even if it didn’t and it was slower… I’ll take slower over all those fucking shit ads
Yeah, of course ads aren’t an option, but ungoogled chromium still supports mv2 for now and I can’t watch a youtube video and play a video game at the same time with firefox on my machine…
Granted, I’m probably trying to make inadequate hardware do more than it should, but chromium works and I don’t want to upgrade my hardware right now.
Now this in curious about. Why can’t you do both at once?
I daily game with Firefox and dozens of tabs open. Granted in using Linux.
Youtube is especially egregious. I’ve tried various hardware acceleration settings and h264ify but it really brings my pc to its knees.
Im on linux, and when I run my windows vm (qemu kvm) with either Visual Studio, SQL Server Management Studio, or Fusion 360 in it, firefox on my host machine runnimg youtube just barely pushes it over the edge.
I absolutely recognize how wild what I’m asking this little computer to do is, but I can just get away with it in chromium but not firefox (since the last time I checked)
The day I can do it all with firefox I will be a happy camper
Edit: also, I specifically said games but didn’t name one… FFXIV and Deadlock both crash if I’m running youtube in chrome (and Discord at the same time).
I play elden ring, nightreign, harry Potter Hogwarts legacy, doom 2016 and eternal and a whole bunch of other shit. No issues.
Also use YouTube. No issues.
Are you using open source video drivers perhaps?
I’m using an AMD APU, so just the regular mesa drivers.
The last time I had issues was about a year and a half ago, and I switched to Brave, but a year later (5 months ago) I was convinced to give Ungoogled Chromium another chance by someone here on lemmy (because of all the controversy surrounding Brave).
In the past I always used firefox because its customization features are so much richer, settings werent intrinsically tied to google (or amputated like in ungoogled), and the source code is more comprehensible (firefox is so neatly organized and easy to build yourself, and chromium is a giant mess under the hood).
I really want to use firefox again… maybe I’ll get a dell precision tower off ebay and shove a cheap old nvidia card in it with the proprietary drivers to solve my problems 😅
I’ve been on nvidia forever at this point. Personally looking forward to getting back to AMD next time around. They are more open with their drivers. You should try the AMD proprietary drivers instead.
Cue the Brave shills “recommending” to switch to Brave in 5…4…3…
Wait what’s wrong with Brave?
Brave is by a company who’s in the business of serving ads.
Much like google was back in the day, they’re trying to obtain market share with a product that they can easily manipulate after the fact and rely on people not jumping ship as things get progressively worse and worse bit by bit
Think of the “approved ads” era followed by the “enhanced security features” which made it so your block list couldn’t be updated at a moments notice and now it’s being stripped entirely.
Better to avoid it entirely and just use Firefox or a derivative thereof
It’s not firefox
Firefox doesn’t have tab groups on mobile
“Firefox doesn’t have this one feature I like so I will keep using browser made by an ad company. I’m sure there will be no consequences long term”.
Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin
“Oh shit. No one could have predicted this!”.
Firefox is already using Google’s Play Integrity API. They don’t give a shit about us, they’re helping Google fuck everyone over.
While Firefox itself can still be installed and used on rooted or non-certified Android devices, some AI-powered features may not be available on those platforms.
Yeah, that’s not a real issue for me. Is it for you?
Firefox dragged its feet on an extremely useful feature for years.
Are you seriously trying to act like Firefox hasn’t been continually shooting themselves in the foot the past decade?
I’ve been using Firefox for decades without issues. Yes, Chrome was a better browser for a long time but Firefox wasn’t that far behind and was absolutely fine browser to use.
Do you really think Mozilla could win browser race with Google, the fucking second biggest company in the world? Of course Chrome had more features, it had basically unlimited resources at it disposal. But yeah, let’s blame Mozilla for not winning with them decisively.
YOU are shooting yourself in the foot. You abandoned Firefox for couple of features and soon you will be browsing the web with ads. Come back and tell me how extremely useful Chrome’s features are when can you no longer skip Youtube ads.
Hey dumbass, you remember how Mozilla decided to use Google’s Play Integrity API for their Android browser?
Mozilla is cooperating in fucking all of us over.
You may have a browsing addiction if you need tab groups on mobile, wow…
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?
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/
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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.
this aged like milk - RIP vivaldi
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Thanks, I’ll look into the lists I guess. My main complaint is the element zapper however!
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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.
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.
The more you tighten your grip, Google, the more ad revenue will slip through your fingers.
They could have sat on 30 second ads every 15 minutes till the cows came home and most of us would have been fine with it.
They could have sat on premium family for $9 a month for years and we’d have been ok with it.
They had to be greedy as fuck until none of us want to use their services.
Librewolf gang rise up
Just use Firefox (or Zen Browser, which is a nice fork of Firefox)
Waterfox
I counter with IronFox! Lol I just enjoy all the alternativeFox options
I use ironfox on my phone and librewolf on my desktop.
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.
God I hope Ladybird will work. I’m so done with Google. And the fact that Firefox is dependant on their money leaves a bad aftertaste, everytime I open a browser. Even though I use Zen.
Fingers crossed for Ladybird and a stable Alpha release in 2026 🤞
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.
