We all knew that the time would eventually come. Google is removing bypasses in Chromium and Google Chrome that allowed users to run legacy extensions in the browser.
Google moved to a new extension rules system, called Manifest V3, which turned out to be a very controversial move. The company claimed that this was all for performance and security, but the change had the fortunate side effect that it would impact content blocker extensions more than any other extension type.
Google modified the rule set several times, which would have killed content blockers more or less in the beginning, and content blockers continue to be available.
However, Chrome users who have enabled bypasses to continue using these extensions will soon realize that they can’t anymore. The reason is simple: Google removed them.
This is not the end of content blocking in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers. Here are the options that you have going forward:
- Switch to a MV3 extension: Browser extensions such as uBlock Origin Lite are available. These continue to block ads in Chrome, but they lack some of the advanced features of the classic blocker.
- Use a Chromium-based browser that continues to support MV3 extensions: Brave, Vivaldi and Opera all pledged to support MV2 extensions going forward. It remains to be seen whether this is going to be the case once the bypasses are removed.
- Switch to Firefox: Firefox supports MV2 and MV3 extensions. You can install uBlock Origin in Firefox and get the best level of protection out of any version of the extension.
- Use a browser with a built-in content blocker: Plenty of options, Brave, Opera or Vivaldi all come with the functionality.