Google has announced the phase-out timeline for Manifest V2 Chrome extensions and the plans to bring Manifest V3 to full feature parity.
Extension manifest is a mechanism that is responsible to limit the capabilities of an extension. Google made the Manifest V3 available with Google Chrome 88 which was declared earlier this year.
Back in 2019, Google released a provisional document to reveal the changes in future Manifest V3 and announced the elimination of the webRequest API block. The company also requested content blockers to switch to declarativeNetRequest.
The Product Manager for Chrome Extension & Chrome Webs Store, David Li said that Google has been working hard for years to make Manifest V3 which is more secure, privacy-preserving, and performant than Manifest V2.
With the evolution of extension, the web landscape will be changed. We are going to experience the future of browser extensions.
Google gave a timeline about when it will phase out the Manifest V2 extensions:
- January 17, 2022: From this day, Google Chrome’s web store no longer accept any new Manifest V2 extensions. However, updates to the exisisting ones can still be submitted.
- January, 2023: Chrome will no longer be supporting the Manifest V2 extensions.
Mr. Li further said that in the forthcoming months, Chrome will be introducing an in-memory storage option, support for dynamically configurable content scripts, and several other new capabilities.
Additional details about Manifest V2 phase-out are available here.
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