Manifest v3 Updates

A few months ago we published an article on Manifest v3 and WebData Control.  Since then the world has changed a little more so we thought it would be useful to provide a bit of an update.

The previously advertised timelines for the removal of support for Manifest v2 (MV2) seem to have been a little aggressive with issues outstanding around the implementation of Manifest v3 (MV3).

Google Chrome

Since the last article was published Google have issued a new and updated timeline around MV2 support as follows;

Reference: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/migrating/mv2-sunset/

With Google Chrome version 110 a new policy called “Control Manifest v2 extension availability” was introduced.  This policy is available as part of the Google Chrome Enterprise ADMX templates download.

This policy which can be enabled at either Computer or User level allows for Administrators to control how the browser behaves with regards Manifest v2 based extensions.  As per the help text.

Control if Manifest v2 extensions can be used by browser.

Manifest v2 extensions support will be deprecated and all extensions need to be migrated to v3 in the future. More information and timeline of the migration can be found at https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/.

If the policy is set to Default (0) or not set, v2 extensions loading are decided by browser, following the timeline above.

If the policy is set to Disable (1), v2 extensions installation are blocked, existing ones are disabled. The option is going to be treated the same as if the policy is not set after v2 support is turned off by default.

If the policy is set to Enable (2), v2 extensions are allowed. The option is going to be treated the same as if the policy is not set before v2 support is turned off by default.

If the policy is set to EnableForForcedExtensions (3), force installed v2 extensions are allowed. This includes extensions that are listed by ExtensionInstallForcelist or ExtensionSettings with installation_mode "force_installed" or "normal_installed". All other v2 extensions are disabled. The option is going to be treated the same as if the policy is not set before v2 support is turned off by default.

Extensions availability are still controlled by other policies.

At the time of writing of this article the timelines for when this policy will continue to function is unclear.

Microsoft Edge Chromium

For Microsoft Edge the story is similar.  Since the last article was published Microsoft have issued a new and updated timeline around MV2 support as follows.

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-chromium/developer-guide/manifest-v3.

There may be further information available in the coming weeks/months on this, however at the time of writing there is no policy available to control the behaviour and the timeline is TBD.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox 109 has added support for MV3 extensions however there is no support yet for some of the MV3 features such as DeclarativeNetRequest (DNR).

The latest ESR release Firefox 102.9 does not support MV3 with support expected with the 115-release expected in Q2 ’23.

Again, at the time of writing there are no official timelines around the deprecation of MV2 extensions in Firefox.  The intention from Mozilla is to continue to support MV2 alongside MV3 as features are added.

WebData Control

Avanite continue to monitor for changes in the browser and evolve WebData Control in-line with these changes.

The following table shows the WebData Control browser extensions and manifest versions that are used. 

With the latest WebData Control 4.10 release the Mozilla Firefox extensions still use the MV2 format due to the lack of required MV3 support in the browser.  The intention is to update the Mozilla Firefox extensions in the forthcoming releases based on the availability of MV3 support. 

At this time the WebData Control MV2 extensions will continue to operate as expected and we will provide further guidance on this as more information becomes available.

If you have any questions on this, please feel free to contact info@avanite.com.