The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: “This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it.” Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking “Manage extension” and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).
At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft’s documentation, however, still says “TBD,” so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of “unexpected changes” coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.
Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge’s stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store
Who fucking uses edge?
90% of people and corporations are either using Edge or Chrome and since there’s essentially no difference between the two they are equally bad. We’re back to a browser mono-culture, just like in the bad old days of Internet Explorer.
It’s not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that’s not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery. I haven’t seen a “best viewed in Chrome” for a decade or two.
Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.
It’s not that bad yet. FF works on pretty much any site that’s not demonstrating some sort of bleeding edge fuckery.
Yet. I lived through the first browser war (Netscape Navigator vs Internet Explorer) and I’d estimate we’re right about the year 2000 ish. At that time both browsers were still active and reasonably well supported but it was clear that IE was going to win and somewhere in the IE6 / IE7 (2004 / 2006) time frame is when the real fuckery started. Since Edge started using Chromium in 2018(ish) we’re basically following the same schedule from two decades ago.
Hopefully this sort of enshittification will drive more people to use other browsers.
Sadly this is the same thing we said back then too and we (IT & the tech community) pushed hard to get people to leave IE and adopt Chrome.
I’ve had some mandatory training sites specifically disallow Firefox. But I’ve also had some that only work on Firefox, so it evens out.
Yup. Software developer here for a small company. We use a Windows. Chrome for testing applications and edge is just there. We are all in on Microsoft, server is C# .Net, running on azure with teams and outlook and office.
I do use Firefox though but I’m the only one out of 7.
I’m also a software developer and I’ve never touched any of that professionally. There’s a lot more diversity of ecosystems out there, bud.
On the rare occasion I want to stream movies while on my PC at 1080p, because most online movie services will only stream 1080p to Edge. Some times Chrome will be allowed to stream 1080p but it’s pretty hit or miss in my experience. On another note, basically no streaming services will stream movies to you in 4k on a PC, I’ve also found most streaming apps on my phone won’t give me 4k either, you can only really get 4k streaming to a smart TV… it’s pretty ridiculous.
Why let the streaming services tell you what you can or can’t watch videos on when you can just pirate everything?
Weirdly enough, I like buying movies to encourage people to keep making the kinds of movies I enjoy watching. I have some physical media, but often times you can’t find 4k versions of movies on physical media.
Also, I tend to buy digital and don’t watch subscription services much.
Edge wasn’t that bad honestly, I prefer it over chrome and use it when I need to test a site on that engine.
Firefox has been my daily driver for a decade but that doesn’t really change anything that I said.
My workplace configures edge and chrome by default, were very office365 integrated and support chrome for some dates specific thing.
Now i am privileged with local admin powers so i have firefox. Still the integrations with edge run deep so i still have to use it lots of times. There are plans for copilot which is one of the dummest llm bots (opinion) but is again catered to edge.
I will however never use chrome (anymore). Google was the second tech giant i dropped after facebook. They cannot redeem themselves for destroying the web (opinion). I rarely use search engines anymore but i rather use bing and bing sucks. (duckduck is also based on bing)
Sorry for the rant, but that was relieving. Arch btw.
Corps. All of the bells and whistles it has ties into the corps tenant which includes isolation of things like sync’d profiles, seamless sso, favorites, extensions, etc
Since it’s all under the tenant, all of that data is subject to the same privacy and policies the corp and MS agreed to, which makes it easy to work with other companies that have their own client policy requirements.
MS also makes it easy to control and harden all of their products including Edge using policy controls from a single UI.
You can’t do any of this with Firefox without extra effort.
Yeah the level of control Active Directory can have over Edge is unparalleled. The entire industry would move to a more secure browser and can be centrally managed with Active Directory if something existed.
