Microsoft Edge is about to lose uBlock Origin, too

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.