Firefox stunts on Edge as Microsoft gears up to neuter adblockers: 'uBlock Origin isn't going anywhere'
Overview & Key Takeaways
Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. None of these corpo browsers are free of sin.
Earlier this year, Google Chrome annoyed a whole lot of adblock users by killing support for Manifest V2 extensions. It's a Manifest V3 world now, which means the permissions and APIs that thoroughgoing adblockers like uBlock Origin rely on are a thing of the past on Chrome (it's since been replaced by a pared-down version: uBlock Origin Lite). Now, Microsoft Edge is following suit: "Over the next few months, MV2 extensions will be gradually turned off by default," says Redmond.
All of which is red meat for the folks over at Mozilla Firefox, the free-and-open-source browser that once reigned supreme on our PCs before Chrome came and ate its lunch. In posts across social media, Firefox kicked Edge (and Chrome) in their self-inflicted bruises, declaring that "Our support for uBlock Origin isn't going anywhere", a post that came days after it wrote "Reminder that you can still just… use ad blockers on Firefox. Wild concept, we know."
Now, like I said, it's not like Chromium-based browsers are murdering adblockers wholesale. If you wanna block ads, you can still use less-powerful extensions to do so, but it's a simple fact that if you want a full-fat adblocker in the uBlock Origin mould, the megacorps are rapidly shutting down ways to do that.
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It's also true that Firefox isn't your only option—there are several other browsers out there still touting full-fat adblocker support—but it's probably the biggest name out there fighting the good fight.
Our support for uBlock Origin isn't going anywhere.
— @firefox.com (@firefox.com.bsky.social) 2026-08-11T10:55:07.466Z
Anyway, Firefox's braggadocio prompted an obvious question: hey gang, when's this vaunted adblock support gonna make its way to iOS devices? Alas, there's no hard timeline there, but Mozilla did say that it's actively working on making adblock work on Firefox on your iThings.
In fairness, Apple's strict rules mean that Firefox on iOS (along with other browsers) are more like reskins of Safari than they are full implementations of the desktop browser on mobile. But hey, if people are using Firefox in 2026, it's likely in part down to its robust extension support. Better to be able to offer some form of it than not.
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