Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension.
They don't do it for every extension, but they do so for a wide selection of popular options.
> Recommended extensions differ from other extensions that are regularly reviewed by Firefox staff in that they are curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality and user experience. After receiving Recommended status, safety standards are maintained through automated checks, monitoring, and periodic technical reviews
That's pretty cool. Thanks for pointing that out. I don't see where it says 'on every update' unless you're referring to the automated checks?
I've always wished extensions had more granular permissions though (a la phones, but more so). I think automated ai security checks sound promising soon.
Automated checks are done for every extension on every update. But their recommend extensions they feature on the Extension store, they do other extensive checks for each update.
> Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension.
They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen.
See, this is the kind of thing that makes Firefox cool. They have not only just as good of developer console tools as Chrome, they have forward thinking, truly user-oriented policies. They have had trouble in the recent past at securing funding, but something tells me their user philosophy might save them when all the others turn completely to corporate greed as their main operating mechanism (if they already haven't).
Your reply makes no sense. To the original point, if they had user-oriented policies, they'd have ad-blocking baked in by now. But they don't, and likely never will.
What's funny is that extensions were supposed to be a way to let you do the things the browser didn't want you to do. Guess that was a bit too much freedom for Google to accept, so they had to make a store with a gate, and destroy the APIs so that they're useless. Then they had to make up some reasons to justify that and ram it through the pipeline despite everyone's objections, and the frog got boiled.
Now we're back to needing an actual extension system that does what extensions were supposed to do in the first place.
> Then they had to make up some reasons to justify that
Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren't that unreasonable. I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.
It's just that uBlock Origin is so insanely useful, important and trusted, it should get full access to the entire browser regardless. Honestly, it should be literally built into the browser instead of being a mere extension. Only the conflicts of interest inherent in an ad company maintaining an ad blocker prevent that.
Yes, but if you write your own extension maybe you want to read and modify the data. For example, patch fingerprinting script so that it gets the wrong result.
Furthermore, malicious extension can read the data from the DOM, from forms (for example, password or credit card fields), and in some cases, from JS variables. They can insert fake information into the page. So preventing extensions from reading network data still leaves a lot of options for a malicious extension.
Of course it's tempting to reply "don't install random extensions". But a bigger point here is that browsers have grown so massively complex that it's almost impossible to build one, so we don't have an ecosystem where you can choose your browser for safety and I can choose mine for freedom. Of course, Google has had a big incentive and hand in making it this way.
The Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer let users search Google directly from any webpage, block pop-up ads, autofill web forms, and highlight search terms. It also displayed PageRank metrics, translated foreign languages, checked spelling, and managed web bookmarks.
Browser extensions were also one of the biggest ways to distribute malware. The situation was genuinely horrific. Malware distributors would offer popular extension devs millions of dollars to buy the extension, then silently insert malware which gets auto deployed to millions of people.
Shameless plug here [1], there is a solution for all this. Single monthly subscription to help sites make money by NOT stuffing ads in your face all the time.
Are there any Chromium-based mod/plugin loaders out there? I mean something that uses the same DLL/SO hijacking or injection tricks game hackers use to build mod loaders, to expose a hooking layer for plugins.
It is possible to write your own extension and still use it in Chrome as long as it's not bundled. It would be a huge pain to get the source for uBlock origin and implement it locally yourself, but it might be worth the pain to block ads.
The original uBO relies on Manifest V2, the API Chrome no longer supports. It's impossible to run full UBO (not Lite MV3 version) on current versions on Chrome.
Oh yes they are. Occassionally when I am on a device which doesn't have an ad-blocker. I witness it and I am always left feeling shocked at how many ads Youtube can have. We really don't know the plight of so so many Youtube users. I feel sympathy for them and want to hug them and install an ad-blocker for them.
I actually used to install Revanced for all the relatives who ever complained about Youtube and some who didn't even ask! I just feel like Ad blocker is such a useful thing that I can do to people that I care about who don't know deeply about it.
I must say that it is one of the top entries of lists of most useful/time-saving things I have done in actually saving anybody's actual time.
I express gratitude towards the universe for Ublock Origin. Words can't comprehend how much I love it.
Do people not remember Firefox changing their terms of service last year and allowing them to sell your data to third parties? I don't get it did people forget?
I switched over to LibreWolf and other browsers like that then and never looked back.
I wouldn't be sure this is a long term solution. Maintaining a this into perpetuity would probably take a lot of resources that Vivaldi team might not have.
It will be "largely fine" until the ad networks start using the methods not blocked by the Lite version. You may not even notice that they start tracking you efficiently. See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... for some examples of things Ublock Lite can't do.
Related discussion:
uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari (apps.apple.com)
1156 points by Jiahang on Aug 5, 2025 | 451 comments
Unfortunately, new generations seem to be completely fine with this. People in general, they're just so completely captured by the dark patterns that I get the impression they cannot even imagine a world without them.
I install uBlock Origin on every browser I come across. Everybody notices. The internet just feels better, somehow. People can't quite explain what changed, but they know.
I wonder if new generations will just get better and better at visually blocking off ads when they read. So many layouts are so common that I read a lot of sites and have absolutely no idea what ads they're running because 30-odd years of browsing rendered HTML pages has trained my brain to block off and not process certain areas of the page.
I'm not an advertising apologist, just pointing out that I can remember what ads were on a freemium TV station I watched two nights ago and what ads were on a radio station I listened to this afternoon but I can't remember a single web ad since...I don't know when. This might be because the TV ads have audio and visual, and with radio my alternative at the moment was looking out the window of my car, but web ads just seem very easy to mentally filter.
If only they focused on making Firefox the definitive good browser instead of a platform for their AI efforts.
Firefox will never convince people to leave chrome on philosophy alone. I detest Chrome with a passion and refuse to touch it with a ten-foot pole, but cannot in good faith recommend Firefox to anyone in today’s world. “It kinda works” is about as far a compliment you can give it.
I have used Firefox exclusively every day on macOS for the past year, several hours a day, and have not one single time had to open another browser. None of the customers of my B2B saas use Firefox. Not once have I needed to test in their browsers except quick smoke testing to prove to myself that the rendering and details are identical. All my other browsing is indistinguishable from before when I used Chrome, and from on mobile where I (tragically) am forced by Apple's monopoly to use Safari.
What do you think doesn’t work on Firefox? Aside from Google products purposely crippled, everything works just fine in my experience. It’s fast and stable. If there’s a bunch of AI stuff in it, I’ve not seen it. Of course I believe it exists, I just don’t ever read popups anyways. To be fair, I probably use 5% of the browser’s capability (I imagine many are like me). I browse websites and I have UBO installed.
Anecdotally my own experience is consistent with this with the same platform+browser combination.
It appears that there are now significant numbers of sites - or at least noticeable parts or features of sites - that rely on Google-specific APIs and haven't been tested on other browsers.
However visiting those sites from Apple devices is often similarly frustrating. I'm not sure this is an anti-Firefox thing. It seems more of a not realising there are other browsers apart from Chromium-based ones thing.
I kinda wondered myself if this was some kind of coordinated effort to make Firefox not work. It wouldn't surprise me if it was later discovered that Google paid some Linux subsystem maintainer to slip in some nefarious code somewhere that altered the way Linux implements rendering specifications ever so slightly such that Firefox appeared broken. Just the conspiracy theorist in me.
I daily Zen (Firefox under the hood) and the only thing that I consistently need to open other browsers for is direct USB support (mouse/keyboard drivers in the browser). Other than that, I don't remember when was the last time something wasn't working in Firefox.
Anyone can build a custom extension to do anything an extension is allowed to do. I had ~7 standard extensions that I pretty much always install into chrome browser. Over the past month or so I've been using Claude code to build a single custom extension that handles all of the things I used 7 extensions for previously. One extension does everything. You can even use the existing extensions you already use as guides for Claude to make sure all of the features you want are included. One extension to rule them all!
Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension.
They don't do it for every extension, but they do so for a wide selection of popular options.
> Recommended extensions differ from other extensions that are regularly reviewed by Firefox staff in that they are curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality and user experience. After receiving Recommended status, safety standards are maintained through automated checks, monitoring, and periodic technical reviews
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
That's pretty cool. Thanks for pointing that out. I don't see where it says 'on every update' unless you're referring to the automated checks?
I've always wished extensions had more granular permissions though (a la phones, but more so). I think automated ai security checks sound promising soon.
Automated checks are done for every extension on every update. But their recommend extensions they feature on the Extension store, they do other extensive checks for each update.
> Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension.
They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen.
Ladybird browser is going to be awesome.
See, this is the kind of thing that makes Firefox cool. They have not only just as good of developer console tools as Chrome, they have forward thinking, truly user-oriented policies. They have had trouble in the recent past at securing funding, but something tells me their user philosophy might save them when all the others turn completely to corporate greed as their main operating mechanism (if they already haven't).
Your reply makes no sense. To the original point, if they had user-oriented policies, they'd have ad-blocking baked in by now. But they don't, and likely never will.
You're absolutely right.
What's funny is that extensions were supposed to be a way to let you do the things the browser didn't want you to do. Guess that was a bit too much freedom for Google to accept, so they had to make a store with a gate, and destroy the APIs so that they're useless. Then they had to make up some reasons to justify that and ram it through the pipeline despite everyone's objections, and the frog got boiled.
Now we're back to needing an actual extension system that does what extensions were supposed to do in the first place.
> Then they had to make up some reasons to justify that
Hate to be the one to defend Google here, but the reasons weren't that unreasonable. I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data. The declarative API idea is pretty good.
It's just that uBlock Origin is so insanely useful, important and trusted, it should get full access to the entire browser regardless. Honestly, it should be literally built into the browser instead of being a mere extension. Only the conflicts of interest inherent in an ad company maintaining an ad blocker prevent that.
Yes, but if you write your own extension maybe you want to read and modify the data. For example, patch fingerprinting script so that it gets the wrong result.
Furthermore, malicious extension can read the data from the DOM, from forms (for example, password or credit card fields), and in some cases, from JS variables. They can insert fake information into the page. So preventing extensions from reading network data still leaves a lot of options for a malicious extension.
Of course it's tempting to reply "don't install random extensions". But a bigger point here is that browsers have grown so massively complex that it's almost impossible to build one, so we don't have an ecosystem where you can choose your browser for safety and I can choose mine for freedom. Of course, Google has had a big incentive and hand in making it this way.
> I want my browser to prevent random extensions...
Why are you installing random extensions?
I'm not. The only extension I trust enough to install is uBlock Origin.
The Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer let users search Google directly from any webpage, block pop-up ads, autofill web forms, and highlight search terms. It also displayed PageRank metrics, translated foreign languages, checked spelling, and managed web bookmarks.
Imagine the massive amount of data they must have harvested through it.
Browser extensions were also one of the biggest ways to distribute malware. The situation was genuinely horrific. Malware distributors would offer popular extension devs millions of dollars to buy the extension, then silently insert malware which gets auto deployed to millions of people.
Manifest 3 is why I finally shut down Sitetruth and Ad Limiter. Removing ads from Google Search is now possible only in Firefox.
uBO still works in newest Vivaldi.
Shameless plug here [1], there is a solution for all this. Single monthly subscription to help sites make money by NOT stuffing ads in your face all the time.
[1] https://zeroad.network
For those who use uBlock Origin Lite, have you noticed any issues/deficiencies in what ads are blocked? I haven't.
Are there any Chromium-based mod/plugin loaders out there? I mean something that uses the same DLL/SO hijacking or injection tricks game hackers use to build mod loaders, to expose a hooking layer for plugins.
Wtf, simply not true:
Brave: chrome://flags/#brave-extensions-manifest-v2 > brave://settings/extensions/v2 > Enable uBlock Origin (Brave-hosted, even better).
Helium comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed.
Edge even still has it https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/ublock-ori...
And I'm sure others ...I personally only use/test Brave, Brave Origin, Helium and Firefox.
The title says "major browser", which none of those are.
Brave surely is a major browser with 100+M MAU, not too distant from Firefox with 150+M MAU.
Support Firefox. F** Chrome.
+1 *
Fix?
Free Chrome. /s
It is possible to write your own extension and still use it in Chrome as long as it's not bundled. It would be a huge pain to get the source for uBlock origin and implement it locally yourself, but it might be worth the pain to block ads.
The original uBO relies on Manifest V2, the API Chrome no longer supports. It's impossible to run full UBO (not Lite MV3 version) on current versions on Chrome.
I've been using Firefox for over 6 years now and I've never regretted it.
20 years and counting. :)
Thanks for every day that this browser works.
Sometimes I had to test something in Chrome - and it’s painful experience.
But it really depends on personal view - I have tried to convert my friends and they don’t feel it.
Does it really make a huge difference to keep supporting Manifest Version 2?
I've installed uBlock Origin Lite in my Edge browser and I don't see any ads there either.
YES!!
uBO + Steven Black hosts list + firefox. Peace, for now at least.
I just use Brave. I haven't seen a YouTube ad in years.
There are ads on YouTube?
Oh yes they are. Occassionally when I am on a device which doesn't have an ad-blocker. I witness it and I am always left feeling shocked at how many ads Youtube can have. We really don't know the plight of so so many Youtube users. I feel sympathy for them and want to hug them and install an ad-blocker for them.
I actually used to install Revanced for all the relatives who ever complained about Youtube and some who didn't even ask! I just feel like Ad blocker is such a useful thing that I can do to people that I care about who don't know deeply about it.
I must say that it is one of the top entries of lists of most useful/time-saving things I have done in actually saving anybody's actual time.
I express gratitude towards the universe for Ublock Origin. Words can't comprehend how much I love it.
Do people not remember Firefox changing their terms of service last year and allowing them to sell your data to third parties? I don't get it did people forget?
I switched over to LibreWolf and other browsers like that then and never looked back.
You can also run Ad Nauseum if you want to
Vivaldi 8.1 still supports it (Chromium 150) as loaded unpacked extension.
Edit: and latest August 14, 2026 Chromium 152.0.7977.38 based Snapshot https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/address-field-calculator-an... has this in patch notes:
"[Extensions] Re-enable and extend Manifest V2 extension support for the time being (VB-130324)"
I wouldn't be sure this is a long term solution. Maintaining a this into perpetuity would probably take a lot of resources that Vivaldi team might not have.
Ads are so invasive and prevalent now that you need an ad blocker just to use the internet.
Yet 90% of people don’t use a browser capable of running ubo
Because all those other browsers can still block ads. I use ubo lite for safari and it's largely fine.
It will be "largely fine" until the ad networks start using the methods not blocked by the Lite version. You may not even notice that they start tracking you efficiently. See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... for some examples of things Ublock Lite can't do.
Related discussion:
uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari (apps.apple.com)
1156 points by Jiahang on Aug 5, 2025 | 451 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825
Now? Sure seems like it's been that way for well over a decade.
Firefox, after 20 years, once again has an advantage over the other browsers.
Let's hope for new generations to get tired of so many ads to finally ditch chrome.
Unfortunately, new generations seem to be completely fine with this. People in general, they're just so completely captured by the dark patterns that I get the impression they cannot even imagine a world without them.
I install uBlock Origin on every browser I come across. Everybody notices. The internet just feels better, somehow. People can't quite explain what changed, but they know.
It's funny. Over 20 years ago, I got people to switch to Firefox because of the AdBlock extension.
In case people don't know, Firefox was the first major browser to even have extensions.
There is only XUL!
I wonder if new generations will just get better and better at visually blocking off ads when they read. So many layouts are so common that I read a lot of sites and have absolutely no idea what ads they're running because 30-odd years of browsing rendered HTML pages has trained my brain to block off and not process certain areas of the page.
I'm not an advertising apologist, just pointing out that I can remember what ads were on a freemium TV station I watched two nights ago and what ads were on a radio station I listened to this afternoon but I can't remember a single web ad since...I don't know when. This might be because the TV ads have audio and visual, and with radio my alternative at the moment was looking out the window of my car, but web ads just seem very easy to mentally filter.
uBlock Origin Lite works decently on Chrome so I doubt this will help migration to Firefox.
Exactly. The difference between the two is not qualitatively different for 99% of users.
If only they focused on making Firefox the definitive good browser instead of a platform for their AI efforts.
Firefox will never convince people to leave chrome on philosophy alone. I detest Chrome with a passion and refuse to touch it with a ten-foot pole, but cannot in good faith recommend Firefox to anyone in today’s world. “It kinda works” is about as far a compliment you can give it.
"It kinda works" is factually incorrect.
I have used Firefox exclusively every day on macOS for the past year, several hours a day, and have not one single time had to open another browser. None of the customers of my B2B saas use Firefox. Not once have I needed to test in their browsers except quick smoke testing to prove to myself that the rendering and details are identical. All my other browsing is indistinguishable from before when I used Chrome, and from on mobile where I (tragically) am forced by Apple's monopoly to use Safari.
Do you have evidence to support your false claim?
Agreed, I can't understand where these experiences come from.
I only ever use Firefox, at work, at home, mobile. Since forever, as long as there has been a Firefox (and Mozilla before that, Netscape prior).
There was one time about 8-10 years ago that I encountered a site that didn't work in Firefox, was some weird proprietary training module at work.
So yes, I did encounter one site that didn't work in Firefox in the last ~20 years. One.
What do you think doesn’t work on Firefox? Aside from Google products purposely crippled, everything works just fine in my experience. It’s fast and stable. If there’s a bunch of AI stuff in it, I’ve not seen it. Of course I believe it exists, I just don’t ever read popups anyways. To be fair, I probably use 5% of the browser’s capability (I imagine many are like me). I browse websites and I have UBO installed.
In the last few months, I've seen a huge upsurge of sites that simply won't work for me in Firefox.
Not sure if it's the FF + Linux combination. Should probably try with a fresh profile to confirm.
It sucks, but I'm in on FF all the way. If much of the web stops working for me, it just means I have more time on my hands!
Anecdotally my own experience is consistent with this with the same platform+browser combination.
It appears that there are now significant numbers of sites - or at least noticeable parts or features of sites - that rely on Google-specific APIs and haven't been tested on other browsers.
However visiting those sites from Apple devices is often similarly frustrating. I'm not sure this is an anti-Firefox thing. It seems more of a not realising there are other browsers apart from Chromium-based ones thing.
I kinda wondered myself if this was some kind of coordinated effort to make Firefox not work. It wouldn't surprise me if it was later discovered that Google paid some Linux subsystem maintainer to slip in some nefarious code somewhere that altered the way Linux implements rendering specifications ever so slightly such that Firefox appeared broken. Just the conspiracy theorist in me.
What doesn’t work? It’s my daily driver and it renders every website I visit.
I daily Zen (Firefox under the hood) and the only thing that I consistently need to open other browsers for is direct USB support (mouse/keyboard drivers in the browser). Other than that, I don't remember when was the last time something wasn't working in Firefox.
Related:
Microsoft Edge is about to lock out older ad blockers, just like Chrome did
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49220392
Edge is just chromium under the hood. So not a surprise there, should be easy lift for them.
Thank God for the Brave browser. For those disliking their built-in adblocker, there is a Manifest v2 opt-out specifically for uBlock if you need it.
Peter Theil was an angel investor in Brave. That alone is all the reason privacy-minded users need to avoid it.
Because Peter Thiel gave them some money, there's some secret backdoor code that's sending all your information to Palantir?
It's quite likely that Brave itself collects data on your usage and shares at least some of it with Palantir.
This isn't such an outrageous assumption to make here.
Firefox also collects and sells data to no one really knows who.
https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
That is their MO
It's certainly better than stock Chrome but Firefox becoming relevant again is still the ideal option.
It's good but I find they EOL devices/OS's earlier than Firefox.
Isn’t Brave just another Chromium variant?
Chromium is detestable. In whatever form it takes.
What’s detestable is Firefox’s lack of security and Mozilla’s priorities surrounding it compared to Chromium
https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1unhtxu/initial...
Anyone can build a custom extension to do anything an extension is allowed to do. I had ~7 standard extensions that I pretty much always install into chrome browser. Over the past month or so I've been using Claude code to build a single custom extension that handles all of the things I used 7 extensions for previously. One extension does everything. You can even use the existing extensions you already use as guides for Claude to make sure all of the features you want are included. One extension to rule them all!
>Anyone can build a custom extension to do anything an extension is allowed to do
Yes, that's why google moved to manifest v3 and extensions can't do as much.
Can't they just modify the browser itself with an injection into the executable
surely there is a way around that
Operative work there is 'just'