Chrome's old extensions are gone for good now, not just switched off

Yesterday Google finished a job it started in 2022. On 31 August, every remaining Manifest V2 extension was removed from the Chrome Web Store: listings deleted, search results emptied, reinstallation impossible. Google's own deprecation timeline says it without any softening - those extensions "cannot be reinstalled from the Chrome Web Store once removed from Chrome."

Most people won't notice today, because the actual switch was flipped a year ago. Chrome 138, in July 2025, disabled Manifest V2 extensions for everyone on every channel and removed the button that turned them back on. What closed yesterday was the shop, not the product. The moment this bites is the one nobody plans for: a new laptop, a reinstalled Windows, a fresh Chrome profile on a different machine - and an add-on you have used for years simply isn't there. No link brings it back.

Ad blockers are the visible casualty, because the new rules changed how filtering works: extensions now hand Chrome a list of rules in advance instead of inspecting each request as it happens. uBlock Origin Lite is the Manifest V3 version and it is still in the store, from the same developer, though it is deliberately a smaller tool than the original. Firefox kept the older filtering method, which is why the full version still runs there and why a fair number of people have quietly moved over.

Either way, this is a good week to open chrome://extensions and read the list properly. Abandoned add-ons get bought up and pushed out as something else entirely, which is a real route onto a PC. Tendvane's Safety check flags browser add-ons and programs you never chose to install, and if one has already changed your homepage or search engine, the "browser hijacked" wizard puts them back.