Manifest V3 and Microsoft Edge Add-ons
The Microsoft Edge Add-ons ecosystem continues to evolve and invest in building the right value across the board, for our users, our developers and for Microsoft Edge.
Back in October 2020, we announced that Microsoft Edge Add-ons will support the changes proposed as part of Manifest Version 3 or MV3. Subsequently, Microsoft Edge Add-ons stopped accepting new Manifest Version 2 (MV2) extensions from July 11, 2022.
We believe that Manifest Version 3 is an important milestone in the evolution of the web, especially for our end users. Our decision to embrace MV3 changes continues to be based on our dedication to enhance privacy, security & performance for the benefit of our end users, as well as our commitment to reduce fragmentation of the web for developers and allow them to extend & provide rich experiences in Microsoft Edge.
We are aware of key issues or blockers to MV3 adoption that are being highlighted by the developer community. As with any re-platforming efforts, Manifest Version 3 has presented its own set of challenges for both extension developers and the browsers themselves. We have also been actively involved in MV3 related conversations and concerns shared by the extension developer community via Web Extensions Community Group (WECG) and other Chromium developer forums. We see that MV3 is continuously evolving to address many of these concerns and believe that MV3 will reach feature parity with MV2.
Microsoft Edge Add-ons will follow our independent MV3 timelines, considering the Chromium’s MV3 timelines and feedback from extension developers. From our own developer conversations, we also got clear feedback that the extension developers were concerned about the efforts and knowledge required to migrate their extensions to MV3. While we fundamentally align with the MV3 initiative and timelines, we continue to analyze the concerns raised by extension developers and explore the right path for Microsoft Edge Add-ons ecosystem. We are committed to listening to MV3-related feedback from extension developers and are open to collaboratively arriving at solutions that are best for our mutual customers.
In keeping with recent announcements regarding Chromium MV3 timelines, we have updated our MV3 migration timeline. Organizations can continue to use MV2 extensions with the use of enterprise policy at least until January 2024. For more details on our current timelines, please visit our Add-ons developer documentation. developer documentation.
We highly encourage developers to migrate to MV3 as soon as possible to ensure minimal impact to customers. For extensions where migration to MV3 is not possible due to technical reasons or platform deficiency, we highly encourage you to reach out to us via our Github community, so we can partner together on finding alternatives.
We are committed to building a great extension marketplace for our users and our developers. Microsoft Edge Add-ons will continue its journey towards becoming the best extensions ecosystem on the web. Towards this goal, we have been investing in several small but key areas of improvements for our marketplace:
- Investing in our systems to reduce certification time for our developers (closed pilot ongoing)
- Improving our certification processes to ensure our users only get secure extensions
- Minimizing developer effort to manage Edge extensions, including providing the Publish API to enable automating uploading and publishing add-on updates
- Enabling extension developers to respond to user reviews on Partner Center
We are committed to making this transition together with our community. We will continue to evolve our MV3 journey by staying customer-first, and continuously partnering with developers.
Microsoft Edge Team
Source: Manifest V3 and Microsoft Edge Add-ons
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