El creator of uBlock Origin has come out to mention the situation in which the project finds itself in the face of the imminent deactivation of the Chrome Manifesto v2 (which defines the capabilities and resources available for plugins).
Raymond Hill, mentions users of uBlock Origin and other plugins not compatible with Manifesto v3, which as of the version of Chrome 127 this started showing a warning on the extensions page about the end of support and the need to find an alternative, as it is planned to completely disable support for Manifest v2 before the end of the year.
And is that since Google announced Manifesto v3 Chrome project the creator of uBlock Origin did not sit idly by and during all this time, I dedicated efforts to the development of a new version, uBlock Origin Lite (uBOL), a variante adapted to the declarativeNetRequest API of Manifesto v3, which provides access to the browser's built-in content filtering engine.
The new API It is less powerful than the webRequest API, which has been limited to read-only mode in Manifesto v3. Due to these limitations, which manage blocking rules independently and do not allow the use of own filtering algorithms, uBlock Origin Lite only implements a part of the functionality of uBlock Origin.
Starting with Google Chrome 127, a warning about uBlock Origin (uBO) will appear…
This is the result of Manifest v2 support being discontinued in favor of Manifest v3.
uBO is a Manifest v2 extension, hence the warning in the Google Chrome browser. There is no Manifest v3 version of uBO, so the browser will suggest alternative extensions as a replacement for uBO.
It is worth mentioning that uBlock Origin Lite and uBlock Origin projects are not compatible with each other, that is, they are totally different, so it is not possible (so far) to allow an automatic migration from one to another in the Chrome Web Store. Users must decide whether they want to switch to uBlock Origin Lite or choose another ad blocker. Despite the end of support for Manifest v2 in Chrome, the developers do not plan to abandon uBlock Origin, as Firefox and other browsers still maintain support for the full webRequest API.
The v2 uBO manifest will not be automatically replaced by the v3 uBOL manifest. uBOL is too different from uBO to quietly replace uBO; you will have to explicitly choose which extension should replace uBO according to your own prerogatives.
Ultimately, whether uBOL is an acceptable alternative to uBO is a decision for you to make; It is not a decision that will be made for you.
Among the most notable differences between uBlock Origin Lite and uBlock Origin is the lack of support in the Basic operating mode for filters that replace content on a page (“##”), replace site scripts (“##+js”), redirect requests (“redirect=”), apply Content Security Policy (CSP) header filters, and remove request parameters (“removeparam=”). »). To enable these features, you need to explicitly give the plugin extended permissions to modify and read site data.
As for the functions that could not be transferred to uBlock Origin Lite, includes dynamic content and URL filters, HTTP header filters, tools to disable large scripts, fonts and media on individual sites, various filter options (strict1p, strict3p, domain, redirect-rule, removeparam), and DNS tampering protection to prevent blocking.
En general, uBlock Origin Lite is considered less effective against sites that use advanced ad blocking techniques or are designed to minimize errors, as many filters for these sites cannot be converted to rules for the NetRequest declarative API. In terms of performance, uBlock Origin Lite consumes less CPU and memory resources than uBlock Origin, but results in a larger amount of data being downloaded when opening pages.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details in the following link