Mozilla Firefox 109 adds Manifest V3 support, but it’s not the end of ad blocking
Firefox is one of the few browsers left that isn’t powered by Google’s Chromium rendering engine. Even then, there are common standards that Google, Mozilla, and Apple must follow to make the web work as expected across any and allmajor browsers out there. Firefox and Chrome also share some resources when it comes to extensions, making it easier for developers to create add-ons for both platforms.
With Firefox 109, released this week, Mozilla is adding support for Google’s controversial Manifest V3, the underlying protocol used to make extensions work. Thankfully, Mozilla is not copying one of the worst aspects of it, though. Ad and content blockers will continue to work as expected in Firefox.
In short, Manifest V3 is designed to make extensions safer and easier to write by giving them fewer permissions and simpler APIs. A big part of Manifest V3 is an emphasis on user privacy. These are all ideas that Mozilla can get behind, but in the process of proposing and creating Manifest V3, Google conveniently also made it harder for ad blockers to work as expected. A new content blocking method limits the number of rules that a content blocker can use, and both developers and users have been up in arms about these limiting changes. We went over the implications in depth whenGoogle first debuted Manifest V3 in 2020, though the company has relaxed some rules and delayed the death of Manifest V2 in its browser.
In Mozilla’s version of Manifest V3, extensions can use the new method, but Firefox leaves the old, more powerful method intact. This allows for more extensive blocklists and more creative rules to block privacy-invading or otherwise distracting page elements that a browser user doesn’t want to see.
Mozilla’s Manifest V3 implementation also continues to support event pages rather than service workers for background services, giving extensions more tools and web APIs to work with for any background activities they need to run. In the long-term, Firefox will also support service workers to ensure compatibility with other browsers.
Along with Manifest V3 support, Mozilla also introduced a new extension button next to the address bar in Firefox 109. This new button opens a menu that shows you all installed extensions and what permissions they have on the site you are visiting. Like in Chrome, you can use this menu to pin your most-used extensions to the top bar and hide the ones that you don’t need to see all the time.
In Firefox for Android, you’re still stuck with a small number of handpicked extensions only by default. At least it’s now possible toadd a custom add-on collectionto the mobile version of Firefox, which effectively gives you access to all the extensions you might need—it’s just a hassle to set this up.
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