On August 31, 2026, every remaining Manifest V2 extension was removed from the Chrome Web Store. The extensions themselves had already stopped running back in July 2025 with Chrome 138, so what disappeared this time was the distribution channel. The migration to Manifest V3, phased in over more than four years, is now complete in both name and practice.

What vanished was the storefront, not the runtime

The removal targeted the Chrome Web Store listings for extensions that were still built on Manifest V2. According to Google, Manifest V2 extensions installed on Chrome 138 or earlier stay installed on the device, but they cannot receive any updates, and once removed from Chrome they cannot be reinstalled from the Chrome Web Store.

When a listing disappears from the store, so does everything attached to it: the reviews, the install count, and the store URL itself. Enterprises that deployed an extension by referencing its item ID no longer have a target to point at. These extensions had already stopped working, but this closes off any path back.

A shutdown that took more than four years

The retreat from Manifest V2 began long before this. The Chrome Web Store stopped accepting new public and unlisted Manifest V2 extensions in January 2022. Private submissions were cut off that June, which sealed the door on new arrivals.

Existing extensions were first touched in June 2024. On the Beta, Dev, and Canary channels, users with Manifest V2 extensions installed began seeing a warning banner on chrome://extensions, and Featured badges were stripped from those extensions. Disabling started on stable in October of that year, and by the end of March 2025 Manifest V2 was off by default on every channel. Users could still switch it back on at that point, but that option was gradually taken away.

The decisive step came with Chrome 138 on July 24, 2025. Manifest V2 was disabled across all channels, and users could no longer re-enable it themselves.

The enterprise exemption closed with Chrome 139

Businesses were granted a longer runway. Organizations that set the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy could keep internally distributed Manifest V2 extensions running, which mattered for teams with custom extensions wired into their workflows.

That policy was removed in Chrome 139. Unlike the consumer-side rollout, which arrived gradually, this change hit every user the moment they moved to Chrome 139. Chrome 138 is therefore the last version where Manifest V2 runs, and staying on it means giving up security updates. That is not a workable long-term position.

What Manifest V3 actually changed

Manifest V3 narrows what an extension is allowed to do inside the browser. Persistent background pages were replaced by event-driven service workers, and executing remotely hosted code was prohibited outright. Network request handling also shifted: instead of an extension inspecting every request and deciding case by case, the browser applies rules that the extension registers in advance.

Google's stated goals were better security and lower resource use. Fewer persistent processes do mean lower memory consumption, and a structure that cannot pull in arbitrary code later makes review far more meaningful.

Ad blockers felt the change most sharply. uBlock Origin relied on inspecting every request to make its decisions, so it could not carry that design into Manifest V3, and a reduced version called uBlock Origin Lite was created instead. The reasoning behind the constraint is understandable, but flexibility was genuinely lost along the way.

Practical options from here

Manifest V2 extensions no longer run in Chrome at all. If you need the same functionality, the first step is checking whether a Manifest V3 version exists. Most well-known extensions have already made the move.

If you truly need to keep using a Manifest V2 extension, switching browsers is the only real answer. Mozilla has committed to supporting both Manifest V2 and Manifest V3 in Firefox, making it the landing spot for extensions pushed out of Chrome. Just be aware that not every extension ships a Firefox build, so check before you migrate.

Summary

The August 31, 2026 sweep of the Chrome Web Store ended Manifest V2 down to its distribution channel. Execution stopped with Chrome 138 in July 2025, the enterprise policy went away in Chrome 139, and this removal is the cleanup that follows. With no updates and no reinstall path for whatever is still sitting on your machine, the choice now is a Manifest V3 replacement or a different browser such as Firefox.

Note: The thumbnail image is an AI-generated illustration.