I was looking into Brave the other day, but what stopped me was the lack
of anything to replace Video Download Helper. Am I missing something?
Is there a way to download YouTube videos in Brave, or do I stick with
Firefox?
Marc
On 3/6/25 1:25 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
On Thu, Mar 06, 2025 at 21:50:27 +0100, KISER JD wrote:
The Chromium-based browsers will soon lose many adblock capabilities due to
Manifest V3.
When I updated google-chrome-stable the other day, it informed me
that it was disabling uBlock Origin. Thus began my own search for
some answers. I'd never even *heard* of Manifest until that moment,
so I was starting from square zero.
(Short answer: Manifest is a sort of browser extension API. It defines
what capabilities an extension may use. Google is phasing out version 2
of the Manifest API in favor of version 3, which offers fewer features.)
However, I don't use a lot of extensions, and uBlock Origin was the
only one that was disabled by the upgrade. For me, the question wasn't
really "How can I get uBlock Origin to work again?" I mean, it's a
great extension, and I loved having it. The real question, though, was
"How do I get ad blocking to work again?"
Because, let's face it, the Web without an ad blocker is just not a
pleasant experience at all.
One of the possible answers was to switch to "uBlock Origin Lite",
which is less capable (it can't "phone home" to update its block lists
because Manifest v3 doesn't permit that), but may still be good enough
for most people.
Another answer is to use Firefox. In my case, I'm already doing that.
I run both Firefox *and* Chrome (up until the other day), with one set
of tabs in Firefox, and another set in Chrome. So, I was looking for
a replacement for Chrome that isn't Firefox.
I ended up installing Brave. Sure, it's Chromium-based, and it will
eventually drop support for Manifest v2 extensions, including uBlock
Origin (even though it's supported right now). But it has its own
built-in ad blocking *by default*, so you don't actually *need* uBlock
Origin to have a satisfactory environment.
I urge people to investigate the various browsers that are out there
and choose for themselves. Everyone's needs are different, so it's
good that there are multiple choices available.
