Yeah, I heard someone say a week or so ago that they straight disabled it in the browser, and now only the gimped version that works with Manifest V3 works now. Thankfully I switched to Firefox when all this Manifest V3 stuff was announced. As far as I know it’s the only browser out there that isn’t based on Chromium (which Google also controls, so browsers like Brave will likely be affected by this soon as well, unless a bunch of those smaller browsers get together and fork Chromium and maintain it themselves, which I’m not very hopeful about) and so doesn’t have to worry about these shenanigans.
Safari had its own web engine, WebKit, which chromium’s web engine, blink, is actually a fork of.
Opera Used to have it’s own web engine, presto, but they rebased to blink in 2013.
But yah, your options these days for the basis of your browser are basically WebKit(Apple), Gecko(Mozilla) and Blink(Google).
Brave and Vivaldi are chromium based but have adblocking built in rather than relying on an extension. So while they will eventually be impacted on extension support, the built in adblocking (which is quite robust) won’t be affected.
I used Brave for a while and found I still needed to use ublock to cover some things, especially stuff like Youtube ads.
Odd, I’ve been using Brave for a few months now and have not seen any ads on YouTube. I specifically use it on my phone to avoid YouTube ads and allow background playback.
But then you’re indirectly giving the enemy (Google) power by increasing their browser market share, which in turn lets them dictate the future of the web.
Fair, unfortunately though the chromium browsers have features that I enjoy that are not available in Firefox on mobile (for example, tab groups).
This isn’t a direct replacement for tab groups, but there’s a Firefox extension called Tree Style Tab that organizes your tabs into a nested tree structure. I use it a lot to emulate tab groups and the way it lays out the tabs makes it much easier to read imo. It might be worth taking a look if tab groups are chromium’s “killer feature” for you.
If you don’t mind me asking, are there any other must-have features that chromium has that Firefox doesn’t?
It’s mobile where I like the tab groups really, and unfortunately the extensions I’ve found that try to mimic the functionality don’t work there. Honestly that’s the big one but it’s pretty major for me. With the way I tend to browse and research topics it’s hard to manage without tab groups.
The only other big one is services that don’t support Firefox. I use GeForce Now for game streaming so I do that through Brave.
I have used firefox from like 2005 to 2024. I am now using brave and I am quite happy with it. I just disabled all this useless cryptobro crap that it comes with. I tried most of the chromium based browsers and this is by far the one that better fits my needs. It has an adblocker that works well, it has a sync option that is not on google servers and supposedly they dont have that insane telemetry that chrome has. And yes an adblocker is tottally needed and will probably be allways needed. I do run a network adblocker with pihole and nextDNS. I haven’t seen a single add in years and do not miss them at all. I rather ahve a half broken page than some random website trying to sell me satisfiers and blue pills.
laughs in Firefox
Is there any firefox based browser on android where I can have easy gestures for the arrow buttons? All the firefox versions I can find require me to do this in two clicks which for the way I browse is a pain in the arse. Can I fix this somehow?
You mean swiping left up go back? Works fine for me in regular FF on Android…
Doesn’t work for me. I don’t have “plain” android but a specific type that’s compatible with my eink screen.
Chromium gestures work fine though.
No feature for it that I know of. They may be thinking of the swipe to change tabs support?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-gestures-in-firefox-android
I just downloaded the Kagi Orion browser and I can install extensions from both Chrome and Firefox web stores!
Cries in only Chrome and Edge at work 😢
If you had uBlock origin already, you may have gotten a message through Chrome that it was no longer supported, so it’s been disabled, and gives you the option to remove it. However, I noticed you don’t have to remove it, and it can be re-enabled. However, I need someone smarter with adblockers than I to say if this is actually helpful and not hazardous.
People are saying manifest v2 (the old API that ublock uses) will be gone soon, which I think should effectively make ublock unusable whatever you do unless you stop updating chrome maybe (which could open you up to a ton of security issues) ? Not sure, don’t care since I’ve ditched chrome long ago
Good to know, thanks.
Download Firefox portable
Download Firefox portable
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Link for convenience.
At large organizations you’re generally not allowed to download much of anything without it passing through IT security and management first. If it’s a no, it will probably stay a no.
I work for a non-profit and they are way more lenient about what we would like to install as long as the job gets done.
Then you have bad opsec and security holes.
This matters more for some industries than others. But this attitude lets a malicious employee install basically whatever they want in service of “the job” and you won’t even know you’re being breached until after it’s all over.
Well, we still have to get approval. But it just seems like they don’t mind as much. For example, I don’t know how many companies out there would be fine with installations of AutoHotkey and LibreOffice.
Just remember,it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission!
Just to be clear, I mean it’s literally managed at the Group Policy level (in Windows server environments at least) and no amount of asking will suddenly give your user account permissions to be able to save files of any kind.
You generally literally cannot download it without going through IT to get them to approve of and give your account access first.
Ya I forgot I have escalated device privileges and an admin account, which I definitely would have used for installing anything. Although I believe I can also skirt the rules using winget on a user account. That will probably get you in trouble however!
Tell your IT.
Officially only Edge is supported, but Chrome is tolerated. It’s a full MS environment.
My condoleances
Same here. The worst thing is in their justification of disallowing Firefox they listed that it was not an enterprise application. I get that it might be extra effort to support it but don’t list something factually untrue as a lame cop out for why you don’t want to.
Was told it wouldn’t be allowed because you couldn’t restrict it using GPO… Until I told them they could absolutely apply those restrictions using GPO and even provided the ADMX templates.
Click on every single ad and banner, click “I agree” on every pop-up. Make that computer hate it’s life!
uBlock Origin Lite does work, but it’s predefined lists only. You can’t use the element zapper 🙁
lame
How To Get Fired 101
Yeah. What company wouldn’t allow it?
When I was working for an ad exchange, everyone had adblock installed in their browsers, I found that quite ironic.
I would argue it’s a security issue not to have any ad blocking. Many scams online start with popups or fake ads.
So if you get the opportunity to talk to IT that’s what I would mention.
(Although they have since taken down their PSA woth no explanation)
A good IT is blocking ads at a company-level. Browser extensions wouldn’t matter, and in fact, shouldn’t be allowed for the same reason.
I’m not always working in the office, and they’ve asked us to connect to VPN only if we need access to the internal network. Email and Teams work without VPN, but now you want me to log in for web access? A browser blocker is better imo.
You can only catch so much at the edge and DNS level. Browser extension catches the stragglers that get through. But we’ve mitigated virtually all browser induced malware possibilities by just moving to cloud-based internet isolation. It’s similar to what the DoD uses, if anyone’s familiar with their use case: https://www.bylight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CBII_2020-2025.pdf
Even with CBII ads still make the internet cancerous to even look at
I used to develop ads (non intrusive things for home depot or go RVing) and i used ad blockers. When testing, i would just run private browsing with plugins disabled…
Yeah. What company wouldn’t allow it?
My IT department uninstalled it from my work laptop, and told me not to reinstall it because - and I quote: “The only browser IT officially supports is Google Chrome.”
What makes this doubly stupid is that I’m a web developer. I literally can’t test my stuff on another browser…
Download a Firefox based browser from the Microsoft store?
I can’t install anything. I’m lucky I can install uBlock Origin because I worked out later most extensions are disabled too. But I guess it’s only matter of time until that disappears.
Store is disabled
Wellp, time to get a new job.
some “infosec” systems tags firefox as a “vulnerability” risk
ahem tenable ahem
I would have run already.
Edge extension store still has it I think. Use it until Edge removes it as well. Then tell the IT to use Firefox highlighting the importance of adblocking.
I don’t like my chances of swaying IT. The organisation is too big and I’ll get told I should be using Edge which is the only officially supported browser.
Yeah, that’s true.
This is probably the single thing that got me to switch to Firefox. Privacy whatever, I don’t care about my data or the morality of my tech company or whatever, but mess with my adblocker and goodbye.
I’m mostly in the same boat. If you really want to know my kink-search-history, I really DGAF. The morality is nice to think about but it’s all about your personal morals in a lot of cases.
firefox is going through thier own enshittifcation down the line, they changed ther policy about data recently
They changed the wording of their policy for legal reasons. They haven’t actually changed what they do. They already updated the text of the policy to clarify.
…The reason being that they can’t legally claim they don’t sell your data.
They changed the phrasing, since in some jurisdictions “sharing anonymized data with partners” can apparently be interpreted as a sale of data, if they get something in return, even if it’s not a fiscal payment.
But after the outrage that sparked, they’ve rephrased the policy again and wrote a lengthy article detailing the reasoning, which is at the very least plausible.
As I understand it that has more to do with covering their ass. They haven’t changed their practices.
The fact that they think they need to cover their ass about selling user data is concerning enough.
Don’t take my word for it, you can read what they said about it here. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Yeah, I read that and I think it’s a weak justification.
I read about this too, and it worries me. Google has donated over a billion dollars to Mozilla over the years. That alone doesn’t scare me so much as it’s a blatant propaganda tool to deflect the antitrust sentiment that plagues them and will probably some day do its work of breaking them apart.
Fortunately, there are numerous open source forks. I am currently using Librewolf, a fork of firefox focused on privacy and anti-tracking, and it has worked without a hitch. A couple of my extensions have required fiddling with to get right but it’s part of life if you care about these things.
I’ll care when Firefox loses ManifestV2 support.
Can I have your bank account username and password?
There’s a way to save your already-installed extension, in “Manage Extensions…” Enable dev mode, then Pack Extension.
However the browser will probably just refuse to run it soon.
Vivaldi, for what it’s worth, seems to still run uBlock Origin just fine. I am afraid to uninstall it now to test if it’ll re-install properly.
My version: 7.1.3570.39 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Might be time to finally move to Firefox though, if Vivaldi doesn’t keep Manifest V2 support.
Vivaldi isn’t even fully open-source anyway, so it’s worth leaving regardless.
I wish Vivaldi wasn’t Chromium-based, because I think it’s the slickest browser out there.
But it’s chromium, so it’s time to move on to Firefox regardless.
Ladybird development can’t happen fast enough.
By that argument the time was a long time ago then. Vivaldi still works with uBlock so nothing has changed on their end. I think it’s still reasonable to use Vivaldi until they are forced to Manifest 3. Despite being Chromium based they’ve always been privacy focused and vocally pro ad blocking. As far as the cult of Firefox, they’ve been showing their true colors lately. They are no saints and their biggest funder is Google. Never forget to follow the money. I’m not personally convinced that a switch on a purely ideological level is indicated.
No, it can’t! That’s a very interesting one indeed, but I wouldn’t risk moving to it at this time.
I swapped to Chrome years ago because YouTube stopped working right on Firefox.
I’ve started the process of swapping back to Firefox after 10 years with Chrome over this.
If they break youtube in alternative browsers or force ads I’ll finally be able to ditch youtube for good.
There were a few extensions you could run in firefox that told youtube that it was totally for reals being accessed by a chrome browser.
Boy, that would have been good to know back in 2015, I feel like I let Google hoodwink me into using Chrome for all that time.
never had a problem with firefox and youtube
It probably didn’t have anything to do with Firefox itself. It’s likely related to something I messed up in FF or it was something to do with the ancient laptop I had at the time being a junk heap, but I tried Chrome and noticed that the trouble didn’t exist there. So I started using Chrome.
I kept using it because of all the google integration, which was really handy when I was using the google business suite to run my own small business. I shut that down two years ago now, so there’s nothing really keeping me on Chrome any more.
I swapped back to FF a few days ago and YouTube works fine now. So I’m back on the FF train and giving Google the finger the whole way over banning the adblockers that I liked.
t probably didn’t have anything to do with Firefox itself
It probably did. Google has been caught red-handed with messing with Youtube to break Firefox.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/
Yeah if you fiddle around with about:config without knowing exactly what yer doing, shit breaks. Fortunately you can type “about:profiles” in the url box, make a test profile, and mess around as much as you want before nuking your default browser.
I know what he’s talking about- there was some javascript spec or something that google proposed, and nobody else bought in, so it never actually became part of javascript’s standard.
But google implemented it into chrome’s javascript engine anyway, and then used it for youtube. There was some fallback code if the new functions weren’t available, but, because of a ‘mistake’ they didn’t work and basically made playback ass for a while until the open source community basically debugged and fixed the issue FOR google, and then spent a few weeks cramming it down google’s throat that it needed fixed.
google does this kinda shit on purpose to reinforce their market position
One of the many reasons why Google should be splitted into different companies
Isn’t it? YouTube isn’t its own company?
He means separate companies with few or no ties with each other.
The only problem I’ve had is that you can’t view HDR content in YouTube on Firefox.
That’s not a big part of YouTube (yet), so it is largely unnoticeable.
What problems with YouTube did you have?
Something was going wrong with video playback. Unfortunately, this was about 10 years ago so I don’t remember many specifics about what the problem was.
I’ve exclusively used firefox to watch youtube on Arch and Ubuntu for years, never had a problem so far for what it’s worth. I keep a laptop in the livingroom with Arch specifically to have adblocking and piping the video out to the TV. The youtube apps are terrible on the Roku last I remember, haven’t tried it in forever but I think the main reason was I didn’t want to see ads anymore.
My wife and I used the YouTube app on a Roku TV for some time, and it was rough. I’m not sure if the intense lag was caused by the app or the low specs of the TV, but either way it was a poor experience.
Ironically YouTube seems to work better for me in firefox, although the issue in chrome may be caused by browser extensions
Webserial is only reason I see to install Chrome. For everything else Firefox works great.
Many chromium browser have built-in adblockers and some of them are on-par with uBO. These are not extensions, so Google can’t really do anything about them. Not worried in the slightest.
Name one that is remotely on par with uBlock and is open source.
Shields.
EDIT: Let’s both save our time: "Brave bad, CEO evil, Chromium, cryptoooo, etc… ". ** I don’t care**. Mozilla isn’t less shitty at all and Firefox is mediocre (source: have been a FF user/advocate from 2002 to 2021). I’m not interesting in debating.
If you don’t care you shouldn’t care to tell others about it either.
As soon as you tell others, others will tell you.
Brave bad, CEO evil, Chromium, cryptoooo, etc… Bullshit browser.
Brave bad, CEO evil, Chromium, cryptoooo, etc… Bullshit browser.
You people are so dumb, predictable and obtuse… Welcome to my blocklist :-)
Cringe.
Blocked.
Welcome to my blocklist :-)
Wow there’s so many awesome people here :O
You’re not interested in debating because you’re scared of being shown how wrong you are. Don’t say anything if you don’t wish to debate anyone, it’s an open forum, in case you forgot. You don’t dictate the rules.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA I’m wrong for having a differente opinion/preference?
Go away, Mozilla shill. I do dictate the rules, by simply blocking you.
Not surprising, Google is an ad company at this point.
It never was anything else
I really hope some team has been following the changes in Chrome/Chromium by Google to remove Manifest v2, and has been keeping a patchset that will undo the damage? Time to make a hard fork and get some funding to try to keep it going?
Multiple browsers have said they will keep support while the code is still there (in Chromium it’s still there, only disabled for now).
When it is removed from Chromium, it’s probably going to disappear for most or all major Chromium browsers.
Well I would seriously consider paying money to a team that keeps it there, if Chromium actually removes the code. I hope others will consider it as well. We need to fight this, even if it means paying some money to a foundation to do so.
Use Firefox and you don’t need to worry about that. Everything being Chromium comes with a whole lot of different problems.
i expect at least the ‘big’ ‘non megacorp’ chromium based ones like vivaldi, opera, brave to keep mv2 as long as it is possible.
but i can totally see google doing some serious mangling of the codebase to make patching-in mv2 difficult.
There’s the futile hope I suppose that antitrust cases going on against Alphabet might force Google to divest Chrome from its advertising arm, so that there’s no pressure to make this whole thing worse. Hah, in my dreams.
On paper they gave the keys to the Linux foundation, but since they still pay most of the developers working on it the only thing it might achieve is taking resources away from Servo.
that would be funny, won’t happen–but funny af. google loses chrome, new owners revert mv2’s removal and go all-in on user control of their browser experience.
- Chrome is no longer available in my phone, computer,…
Never was.
I stayed away from Chrome alternatives, as it had the best Canvas/HTML5 performance (Which oddly enough, was quite important for most of my browsing needs). However, this news means I will have to switch. Installed Firefox for my primary browsing needs, and a few Chromium-based ones to try out for specifically the aforementioned use case.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh
Doesn’t cover 100% of what uBO did, but it still works just as good IMO with DNS based ad-blocking on top.
Surprised so few people are aware of this. It seems equivalent to me when you give it the same permissions Ublock Origin had.
Agreed. I haven’t even found anything that it doesn’t block that UbOrigin did.
But then the whack-a-mole game continues, and you’re constantly having to find new extensions to serve the same task. When you could simply switch to firefox, deal with the very minor growing pains, and keep using uBlock with no problems whatsoever.
I was a super early adopter for firefox. I started using it back in 2005-2006. I’m pretty sure it was still in beta when I started using it.
Over the past 20 years I’ve watched while firefox users have formed a goddamn cult around a software. It’s insane to me, especially because I’m seeing exactly the same things from Mozilla that I was seeing from Microsoft (and later Google) at the time I decided to switch from IE to firefox to begin with…
Firefox isn’t special. It’s falling for all the cloud-based privacy invasive enshittification that Chrome has so far. It’s just getting there slower.
So cool your jets. Especially considering uBlock Origin Lite is uBlock Origin. It’s just compatible with the Manifest V3 standard.
But ublock origin lite is by the same dev… Not as many features but it conforms to the new rules and is still much better than not having a blocker if you use chrome or edge.
The best option here is to just tank Chrome’s market share instead of making something that’s obviously not ideal, work.
Or just use Firefox
Or just use a fork of firefox. Firefox isn’t looking very favorable lately.
I’m giving Floorp a try right now. It’s actually pretty good.
Try zen browser too!
Who will develop the underlying browser then?
My work uses a web-based interface that’s very annoying to use on Firefox. I’m unfortunately tied to Chrome in the meantime, so uBlock lite is a lifesaver.
Firefox was stubborn enough not to support H.265 till JUST recently and only on windows… Doesn’t work with my 4k security cameras as well as Chrome or Safari based browsers.
H.265 is patent encumbered. Blame the 2 or 3(?) patent pool holders (for-profit corporations, unlike non-profit -and-slowly-losing-market-share Mozilla) for not making it free to use for everyone.
This is why AV1 is preferred, it saves bandwidth and there’s no threat of being sued into oblivion.
Missing critical features:
Filter lists only update with the extension, you cannot update them dynamically
No making your own filters and thus no element picker for blocking annoyances on a webpage (a feature so good apple literally baked it into safari)
No support for external lists (which means if you back up your own filters into a list you cannot easily reimport)
No changing behavior on a per site basis
A number of other features as well that are more strictly power user features but still really handy like dynamic filtering and strict blocking domains.
If you have the option stop using chrome and edge, they are some of the worst options you could choose. Even outside of adblock and manifest v3 chrome is horrendous for data harvesting bullshit and edge isn’t great. If you don’t have the option because of an overzealous it dept or whatever and are forced to use it ubo lite is your best option probably and my heart goes out to you
I’m a bit confused as an Adblock Plus user, why did the ublock dev drop those features? ABP uses manifest v3 too and it still has all of those. So it’s clearly not about them being impossible.
Lol who downvoted this
Probably because of the Adblock Plus mention. It’s mired in controversy because of its acceptable ads toggle and requiring ad giants to pay for it. So I can imagine people downvoting comments that put it in a positive light compared to other adblockers.
You may be right, but whether you hate ABP specifically or not should be irrelevant to the question. The question was why other extensions - like Adblock - can have those feature but uBlock Lite can’t. What’s different?
I’d also like to know, personally. I’d wondered the same thing.
According to Adblock Plus’ own blog post about the matter:
With Manifest V3, Adblock Plus is required to limit how many filter lists we have available to users. We’ll have the ability to offer up to 100 pre-installed filter lists that you can turn on and off depending on your preferences. From these available filter lists, users will be able to choose 50 that they can keep turned on at any given time. We’re working to ensure that popular filter lists our users love are supported by us, and that any updates to these lists are brought to you by frequent new releases of the extension. This does mean that initially, our users will no longer be able to subscribe to any filter lists outside of what is provided in the extension.
Re: Element Blocker:
The Block element feature will continue to exist even after the Manifest V3 version of Adblock Plus officially launches. Manifest V3 does require us to adhere to limits with filter lists and user created blocking rules, so there’s a chance things may change in the future. However, we don’t have details quite yet! If you have any more questions about this or anything else, our support team are the best people to ask at support@adblockplus.org.
So this says to me that baked in filter lists are now required, custom lists will not work, and Block Element is probably functioning illegally if it is indeed still functioning though that may change in the future in either direction.
Changing blocker behavior on specific sites is the only thing in that list that I see UBO disallow and ABP not mention at all. Not sure why that was changed.
I’ve read that too, but I still have the ability to add a custom list. It says initially, so I assumed they got around that issue by now, considering it isn’t the case for me.
I technically use Edge which afaik still allows MV2, so in case the extension somehow implements both and defaults to mv2 if available, I’ve decided to install Chrome and get ABP there to test. Even in Chrome, the ability to add a custom list is still there. As are all the other features, like manual updating. With custom list I mean both the ability to add a list per URL, and the ability to add custom arbitrary rules directly.
I don’t really see why element blocking wouldn’t be possible or allowed under Manifest v3. Like, it’s entirely client-side. Manifest never comes into play there.
What I can imagine is that custom lists might work that same way too, removing the ads from the page after they’ve already loaded rather than blocking the web request directly which is afaik how adblocking works in mv2. I can’t tell you if that’s the case or not.
i was able to load it in a (not chrome) chromium-based browser without issue, just the notice across the addon’s page.
the ‘lite’ version is also on there, seems to work ‘ok’. adguard and a few others are also there–they must all be mv3, as only the full ubo has the warning notice on its page of those i checked.
all the mv3 ones run the risk of having updates rejected or delayed by google, especially if they contain code or filter updates (filters must be packed with the addon in mv3) to combat changes google makes to their own sites. firefox or a trusted customized build or maintained fork is the way to go now.
