Edge is phasing out the extension platform ad blockers relied on. What happens next?

Microsoft Edge is finally preparing to say goodbye to Manifest V2, the extension platform behind many long-standing browser tools, including some of the most powerful ad blockers.

Microsoft’s announcement has prompted the same kind of alarming headlines that accompanied Chrome’s own transition to Manifest V3. They warn that Edge is about to “lock out older ad blockers” or “neuter adblockers.” The reality is less apocalyptic, but it is not quite as painless as Microsoft itself might suggest.

Ad blockers will survive in Edge. But Manifest V3 gives extensions less control over network requests, restricts how many filtering rules they can use, and makes rapid filter updates more difficult. Preserving almost the same level of protection is possible, but it takes considerably more engineering work.

When will Edge disable Manifest V2 extensions?

Warnings begin appearing in August 2026, first in Edge Canary, Dev, and Beta. Microsoft will then gradually extend the phaseout to Stable Edge — the version used by ordinary users — with the consumer transition expected to finish by the end of 2026. Managed enterprise installations will have additional time, into early 2027. Microsoft has not announced a single cutoff date or Edge version for everyone.

Microsoft says 95% of extensions are ready — but what about the rest?

According to Microsoft, more than 95% of actively used Edge extensions have already moved to Manifest V3. Only 58 extensions with “meaningful usage” still rely on MV2, and three reportedly have no public MV3 alternative ready.

The number may sound small, but ad blockers and similar privacy extensions are likely overrepresented among the remaining 58. MV3 particularly affects extensions that inspect and modify web requests, which is central to how advanced content blocking traditionally worked.
Microsoft has not named the three extensions, and public Edge Store data cannot settle the question: it shows which manifest an extension uses, but not which MV3 product Microsoft considers its replacement.

Two strong candidates we found are AdNauseam, whose developers have said they lack the resources to produce a restricted MV3 version, and ClearURLs, whose proposed MV3 migration was closed as “not planned”. uBlock Origin is another ambiguous case. Its Edge version uses MV2, but a simpler extension, uBlock Origin Lite, is available under MV3. Whether Microsoft considers it a replacement is unclear. For what it is worth, uBO developer Raymond Hill explicitly said that there was “no Manifest v3 version of uBO.” He also explained that “uBOL was too different from uBO for it to silently replace uBO.”

uBOL can still be a good lightweight blocker, but it sacrifices advanced features that MV3 cannot support. As we explained in our article about uBlock Origin’s removal from Chrome, it is a pared-down alternative, not a true one-for-one replacement.

How Manifest V2 differs from Manifest V3

The difference between uBO and uBOL illustrates the broader trade-off imposed by MV3. Ad blockers must either give up certain features or invest years of work in rebuilding them within a more restrictive framework. The key change is who makes the blocking decision. Under MV2, an ad blocker could examine each request and respond in real time. Under MV3, it generally has to provide a predefined set of rules and let the browser apply them.

Google presented this as a way to make extensions safer, more private, and more efficient. That sounds reassuring, but our co-founder and CTO Andrey Meshkov has argued that limiting extensions does not automatically make their users safer. Scam extensions remained a problem even after the Chrome Web Store stopped accepting new MV2 extensions. In his view, stronger store moderation and closer cooperation with security experts would do more to protect users than simply giving legitimate extensions fewer tools.

For ad blockers, the practical consequences are specific and rather debilitating:

• Fewer rules and less flexibility. Browsers limit how many filters can be active, and some traditional filtering rules cannot be converted into MV3’s format without losing functionality.
• Slower filter updates. Many filters are now built into the extension, unlike it was with MV2, and normally update only when a new version passes store review. This makes reacting to newly introduced ads or broken websites more difficult.
• Slower innovation. Because the browser controls more of the filtering process, extensions cannot freely introduce new ways of handling requests. The feature must fit the browser’s existing rule system; otherwise, developers must build a workaround or wait for the browser to add the necessary capability.

Years of discussion and feedback from extension developers made MV3 considerably more workable. It became a lesser evil rather than the disaster many initially expected, but matching an MV2 extension’s capabilities still demands significantly more engineering resources. As Meshkov put it, the transition required “a huge effort from all parties involved.” Therefore, smaller and volunteer-run projects may be unable to keep up, or may survive only in a more limited form.

How AdGuard survived Manifest V3

For our part, we started preparing already in mid-2021 and released the world’s first working MV3 ad blocker prototype in 2022. After two more years of development, the release version became our main extension for Chrome in September 2024.

This required considerably more than changing a manifest file. We built tools to convert traditional filters into MV3 rules and continued handling cosmetic filtering — the removal of banners, placeholders, and other unwanted page elements — with our own engine.

We also introduced the AdGuard Quick Fixes filter. MV3 does not normally allow built-in filters to update independently of the extension, but Quick Fixes uses the limited allowance for dynamic rules to respond to urgent problems without waiting for a complete extension update to pass store review.

Some restrictions remain. Rule counts are limited, certain filtering techniques cannot be reproduced exactly, and most filter updates must still be delivered with the extension itself. Maintaining functionality close to our MV2 version therefore takes more work, while some improvements may take longer to reach users.

Still, most people should see little difference in everyday filtering. In his latest assessment, Meshkov noted: “We were never thrilled about the move to MV3, but the predicted apocalypse never arrived.”

What will happen to AdGuard Ad Blocker in Edge?

The AdGuard Ad Blocker currently available from Edge Add-ons still uses Manifest V2. Edge users can continue using it while the browser supports MV2 — there is no need to replace or reinstall it immediately.

We will bring our MV3 extension to the Edge store by the time Microsoft’s phaseout reaches regular Edge users. We cannot provide an exact date yet because we are still clarifying how Edge will review updates containing new filter versions. Under MV3, this process is especially important because most filters are packaged inside the extension.

Users who specifically want to move to MV3 on Edge now can install our Chrome Web Store version in Edge. Since Edge is based on Chromium — the same foundation as Chrome — the extension should work and receive updates in much the same way, although we have not exhaustively tested every Edge-specific scenario.

Users who want to retain the full capabilities of the AdGuard ad blocking extension can also consider Firefox, which continues to support the blocking functionality that MV3 removed from Chromium browsers.
The most durable option, however, is protection that does not depend on any browser’s extension platform. System-wide AdGuard apps for Windows, Mac, and Android protect browsers and other applications at the device level. Therefore any changes to Edge, Chrome, or any other individual browser therefore cannot take that protection away.