uBlock Origin Soon Unusable on Chrome: Developer Releases Current Situation Statement

Earlier, Landian.news  reported that starting with Chrome version 127, the extensions page will automatically display extensions that will soon be unsupported, including the well-known ad-blocking extension uBlock Origin, which is on Google's warning list.

Yesterday, the uBO team released new support documentation explaining the current situation. In short, Chrome will no longer support extensions developed based on Manifest v2, and uBlock Origin currently does not have a Manifest v3 version.

Some users may know that the uBO team has developed a uBlock Origin Lite version (hereinafter referred to as uBOL) based on Manifest v3. This extension is different from uBlock Origin, so it will not automatically update or replace the latter.

Once Chrome completely prohibits the running of Manifest v2 extensions, uBlock Origin will "die" on the Chrome platform, but browsers like Firefox will still support it without requiring users to install the uBOL version.

In another support document, the development team listed the differences between uBOL and uBO, including the use of static filtering rules, the inability to implement dynamic filtering, and the inability to perform dynamic URL filtering. Simply put, uBOL lacks many of the functionalities that uBO offers, which is why the new extension is named "Lite."

Since these are two different extensions, even if Chrome completely disables uBlock Origin, it will not automatically update to uBlock Origin Lite. Users will need to manually download and install uBlock Origin Lite from the Chrome Web Store.

Finally, the development team emphasizes that whether uBlock Origin Lite is an acceptable alternative to uBlock Origin is entirely up to the user. If you're willing, please download uBlock Origin Lite and try it out.