Microsoft Edge is about to lose uBlock Origin, too

Remember how one of the best adblockers, uBlock Origin, was effectively killed by Google Chrome? It’s happening again, and this time on Microsoft Edge.

Throughout 2024 and 2025, Google said that it was migrating its extension support from what is called Manifest, from version 2 to version 3. Now Microsoft says that it is following Google’s lead, and beginning that transition as well.

Ads stink, and anyone who says that they don’t affect productivity has never turned off an adblocker and tried to surf a major media site, including our own.

Microsoft’s perspective is that the shift is one that will provide its Edge browser a “secure and performant extensions foundation.” Anyone who’s used the Web, however, knows that this is an issue of productivity: ads drag down performance, slow down your productivity, and even cut into the available memory your PC uses for other tasks. Adblockers help reduce or eliminate those ads, keeping your PC running efficiently.

The uBlock Origin adblocker is my personal favorite, and the one I use when running Microsoft Edge. Unfortunately, it still uses the older Manifest version 2 extensions, and those are on their way out.

“With 95 percent of the top MV2 [Manifest Version 2] extensions on the Edge Add-ons store already moved to MV3 [Manifest Version 3], the ecosystem has made meaningful progress,” Microsoft said in a blog post on Friday. “Beginning in August 2026, Microsoft Edge will start the consumer transition away from Manifest Version 2 (MV2) extensions and toward MV3. Our goal is to complete the consumer transition by the end of 2026, with enterprise deprecation following in early 2027.”

There’s little that you can do. Over the next few months, Microsoft says, MV2 extensions will be gradually turned off by default. You’ll see this first in the Windows Insider channels — Canary, Dev, and Beta — and then transition over to the general-release or Stable channel by the end of the year. Microsoft says that consumers and developers will be able to monitor the timeline here.

The transition between Manifest version 2 and Manifest version 3 tightens access to the browser from the extension’s perspective. Microsoft believes that helps to secure the browser; extension makers believe that this gives them less insight into what’s going on. For adblockers, this lessens their capabilities and makes their protections more generic, developers have said.

“The most important limitation of Manifest V3 is the removal of extension access to the browser’s network layer,” Krzysztof Modras, the director of engineering and product at Ghostery, told my colleague Michael Crider in 2024. “The enforcement of this declarative approach disables advanced on-device protection and in turn will significantly limit innovation in the privacy space. Extensions will lose important tools and permissions that have previously allowed them to quickly react to new threats directly from the user device.” 

Is it time to look for another browser?

Remember, both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome are built upon Chromium, the foundation of most PC browsers save Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft presumably isn’t technically obligated to migrate to MV3 extensions, but the post also noted that Microsoft has committed to an MV3 migration since 2020. Microsoft also said that there are currently only 58 MV2 extensions remaining inside Edge’s Add-on Store for extensions, and only three don’t have a publicly available roadmap to MV3.

It’s not clear whether those figures include uBlock Origin or not. In previous coverage, we’ve included adblockers which still with Google Chrome. Those include uBlock Origin Lite, which is a Manifest Version 3-compliant version of the original uBlock Origin — but with fewer features.

There are other ways to block ads, of course, with anti-ad solutions which live at the system level like AdGuard or VPNs. And so far, the recent version of the Vivaldi browser absolutely obliterates Web ads.

I tend to migrate between browsers fairly frequently, and the fact that they’re free certainly helps. (I don’t like how Edge refuses to give up your stored data as easily as Chrome, however.) I can’t say for certain whether you’ll be safer under Microsoft’s new plan. Still, remember that the appeal of a free Web browser is just that — you should be able to migrate to a Web experience that you want to see, not one that is dictated to you.