Microsoft
announced this week that its Microsoft Edge web browser will support Manifest V2 browser extensions at least until January 2024 using Enterprise policies.
Manifest V3 for browser extensions is hotly discussed among browser makers, extension developers, organizations and home users. For those unaware, the Manifest defines capabilities that browser extensions may use. Criticism surrounded the introduction of a new API for network request modifications for the most part.
Google, the dominant power behind Manifest V3, restricted usage significantly in first drafts. This would have impacted content blockers and privacy extensions, but also other extensions, and would have rendered some
types of extensions unusable in the browser.
Google revised Manifest V3 several times since then. Consensus right now is that these browser extensions are less limited, but still limited when compared to the previously used API.
Microsoft started to test
Manifest V3 support in Edge in 2020 and confirmed early on that it will implement it in the Edge browser. The company stopped accepting Manifest V2 extensions in July 2022, but has not removed support in Microsoft Edge. Manifest V2 and V3 extensions can be installed in the latest version of Microsoft Edge.
