Microsoft Edge is Transitioning to Manifest Version 3 This Year

Following in the footsteps of Google Chrome, as it does, Microsoft Edge will soon transition to Manifest Version 3 (MV3), the Chromium browser extension platform.

“With 95 percent of the top MV2 extensions on the Edge Add-ons store already moved to MV3, the ecosystem has made meaningful progress,” the Microsoft Edge team writes in the announcement post. “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.”

This transition is taking the better part of a decade for the same reason that its Privacy Sandbox technologies push was continually delayed before Google finally canceled it: There is widespread suspicion that it doesn’t accomplish its stated goals and is instead an attempt to limit capabilities to benefit Google and its advertising partners. In this case through defanging ad and tracker blockers.

This is not how Google or Microsoft frame this transition.

“MV3 offers security and performance improvements over MV2, and developers across the ecosystem have done the work to modernize their extensions,” the Edge team explains. “Developers and users have spoken: The vast majority of extensions of all types–from password managers to VPNs to ad-blockers–have successfully transitioned to MV3 with no loss of customer functionality. We’re committed to working with all developers with MV2-based extensions to smoothly move their users to MV3 extensions.”

Well, developers and users have had little choice, as MV3 is happening with or without them. And the makers of one of the more credible and famous ad and tracker blockers, uBlock Origin, have spoken out publicly about how MV3 forced them to compromise the functionality of their extension.

Whatever one’s opinions, MV3 is happening unless you stick with a second-tier browser like Brave or Vivaldi that will try to continue supporting MV2 for as long as possible (or use Firefox). And Microsoft’s schedule for the transition is at least logical. It will disable MV2 in Edge starting with the Canary channel of the Edge Insider Program before doing so in the Dev and Beta channels and then “gradually broaden to Stable in the following months.”