Racond Hill (raymond hill), the author of the Ublock Origin unwanted system, disclosed the situation in the project related to the swift termination of the second version of the Chrome manifesto. This manifesto determines the capabilities and resources available for additions written using the API Webextensions. Ublock Origin users and other extensions that do not support the third version of the manifesto will receive a warning on the Chrome 127 addition page (“Chrome://Extensions”) about the imminent discontinuation of support for the extension and the recommendation to find an alternative. The second version of the Chrome manifesto is expected to be fully terminated by the end of the year.
The Ublock Origin project has introduced a new extension called Ublock Origin Lite (Ubol), which is essentially the Ublock Origin version adapted to comply with the third version of the manifesto. The new declarative API declarativenetrequest allows access to the browser’s built-in engine for filtering content. However, the new API is limited compared to the previous webrequest API, which is now only available in read mode as part of the third version of the manifesto. Ublock Origin Lite is implemented with a subset of the functionality provided by Ublock Origin.
Ublock Origin Lite and Ublock Origin are too distinct from each other to serve as direct replacements in the Chrome Web Store catalog and allow for an automatic transition from Ublock Origin to Ublock Origin Lite without supporting the second version of the manifesto. Users are encouraged to independently decide whether to switch to Ublock Origin Lite or choose an alternative extension for ad blocking. Despite the discontinuation of support for the second version of the manifesto on Chrome, developers do not plan to cease development of the original Ublock Origin, as browsers like Firefox still support the full-fledged Web