Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers
Vivaldi comes with its own built-in Ad and Tracker Blocker, tons of customization options, a built-in Mail and Calendar, and more. Will it follow Google’s strict reliance on Manifest V3? Vivaldi Developer, Julien Picalausa takes a deep dive into this matter.
In 2020, Vivaldi’s Ad Blocker was built as a response to the deprecations announced in Manifest V3, with the intention that it would keep working when existing ad-blocking extensions would become inoperant. The goal is to keep it working regardless of what happens regarding the extension code.
I made some architectural choices early on that I believe should keep it functional, regardless of the Manifest V3 changes. Of course, there is always a possibility that the underlying Chromium architecture will change now or in the future, forcing us to do some extra work to keep this working. Hopefully, a more in-depth description of the architecture and some of the facts surrounding the Manifest V3 changes should help to show why I believe that our implementation is safe for the time being.
The Vivaldi Ad Blocker available on desktop and Android and in cars is built on the same internal chromium API that is used by both the Manifest V2 version of webRequest and declarativeNetRequest.
