The latest Brave beta build has disabled support for Manifest V2 extensions, leaving users unable to run uBlock Origin, AdGuard, and NoScript, which previously worked without issues.

Posts on Reddit and Imgur show users encountering a sudden deactivation of these extensions, forcing some to roll back to earlier versions.

I’ve checked for this issue myself on the latest Brave beta build. Sure enough, visiting brave://settings/extensions/v2 returns an empty list, and all of the Manifest V2 extensions have disappeared. There’s no way to enable them on the Brave beta build.

However, I think there’s no need to panic for now. I’ve also checked on the Brave Nightly version, and all of the V2 extensions still work perfectly fine on it, so it’s probably just an issue with support on the current beta version specifically. The stable version is also unaffected by this, so most users won’t have any issues running these extensions.

Would these extensions function properly once this beta build moves to stable? We’ll have to test that out. Since it still works on Nightly, the issue will likely get fixed in the following updates regardless.

Google has been gradually phasing out Manifest V2 for a while now, and Chrome 151 is set to deliver the final blow by removing the last remaining flags and workarounds that kept these extensions alive. You can read more about that here. This means classic ad blockers like the full version of uBlock Origin will no longer function for Chrome users.

In their place, Google is pushing Manifest V3, a newer extension system designed with stricter rules around background processes. While this improves security and reduces resource usage, it significantly weakens the capabilities of powerful ad blockers.

To combat this, Brave has force-enabled MV2 support (independently of the Chrome Web Store), and you can enable it right now on the stable version of Brave (visit brave://settings/extensions/v2). Chrome users are out of luck.

As explained in recent coverage, this has positioned Brave and Firefox as strong alternatives to those who still want MV2 support. While Brave has publicly committed to supporting MV2 extensions such as uBlock Origin for as long as feasible, the latest beta suggests this support is hitting limits sooner than expected.

Thankfully, users don’t need to rely on any extensions at all on Brave. The browser’s built-in Shields provides native ad blocking that remains completely unaffected by these Manifest changes since it isn’t an extension.

While I highlighted that temporary hiccups in the beta version don’t mean a complete erasure of the feature, things are probably getting harder to support internally, explaining this temporary disruption. There’s no hard end date for now, but you’re probably better off switching to Shields on Brave.

Disclaimer: The Featured image was generated with AI.

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