In a public discussion on August 2, 2020, lead developer Raymond Hill stated that he lacked time to work on uMatrix because it was "a project large enough that [he] would be able to work on it only if [he] wasn't working on uBO." In response to a further comment, Hill stated he would never pass development to anyone after past experience, giving concerns such as monetisation and feature bloat, and he would instead "at most" archive it, offering others the chance to fork the project.[19]
Development of uMatrix ended on July 21, 2021, without announcement, with the project's GitHub repository being converted to a public archive.
uBlock
uBlock[note 1] was developed by Raymond Hill to use community-maintained block lists,[20] while adding features and raising the code quality to release standards.[21] First released in June 2014 as a Chrome and Opera extension, in 2015 the extension became available in other browsers.
A joint Sourcepoint and comScore survey reported an 833% growth from November 2014 to August 2015, the strongest growth among adblockers listed.[22] The report attributed the growth to the desire of users for pure blockers, outside the "acceptable ads" program operated by Adblock Plus.[23]
The development of uBlock stopped in August 2015 after its April break with uBlock Origin but there were updates again starting in January 2017.[24]
In July 2018, ublock.org was acquired by AdBlock and they resumed development.[25] From February 2019, uBlock began allowing users to participate in "acceptable ads",[26][27] a program run by Adblock Plus that allows some ads deemed "acceptable" and nonintrusive, and for which larger publishers pay a fee.[28]
Additionally, it has been praised for its positive environmental impact. By reducing web page load times, it can lead to significant energy savings. Widespread adoption of the tool could help lower energy consumption and mitigate environmental harm.[71]
Supported platforms
uBlock Origin is actively developed for applications based on two major layout engines.[20][52][72]
With Google's phaseout of Manifest V2 in favor of Manifest V3, non-Chromium browsers like Firefox are unaffected.[73] As of April 2025, Microsoft Edge supports uBlock Origin.[74]Brave, another Chromium-based browser, has announced its intent to continue supporting MV2-based extensions such as uBlock Origin.[75]
Google Chrome: Due to the phase-out of Manifest V2-based extensions since October 2024, uBlock Origin is marked as deprecated on the Chrome Web Store and is being remotely removed from Chrome installations.[36][76] uBlock Origin Lite has been designed as a Manifest V3-based version with reduced functionality.[76]
Safari: Support for uBlock Origin in Safari had previously ended with macOS 10.15 Catalina because Apple deprecated the legacy Safari Extension API in favor of a restricted content blocker framework, which limited ad-blocking capabilities and was incompatible with uBO's functionality.[77][78][79][note 2] However, in 2025, development resumed after Apple introduced the necessary components to Safari, and uBlock Origin Lite is again available via the App Store,[80] allowing users to install it on both macOS and iOS.[81][82]
Mozilla Thunderbird: In Thunderbird, uBlock Origin only affects RSS feeds, meaning that the content blocking and privacy protections provided by uBO are not possible for emails.
↑Whitwam, Ryan (February 12, 2015). "μBlock aims to block ads without draining system resources". ExtremeTech.com. Archived from the original on March 24, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2019.
↑"uBlock". github.com. GitHub. Archived from the original on February 25, 2017. Retrieved December 4, 2019.
↑Gardiner, Michael (November 5, 2015). "Adblock Plus vs. Ghostery vs. Ublock Origin: Not All Adblockers Were Created Equal". International Business Times. Archived from the original on July 22, 2017. Retrieved December 4, 2019.
↑"Scientific papers". GitHub. Archived from the original on December 26, 2024. Retrieved December 26, 2024.
↑"MANIFESTO.md". github.com. Archived from the original on March 11, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2019.
↑"Why don't you accept donations?". GitHub. Archived from the original on February 21, 2020. Retrieved January 20, 2020.
↑Pearce, Joshua M. (June 2020). "Energy Conservation with Open Source Ad Blockers". Technologies. 8 (2): 18. doi:10.3390/technologies8020018. ISSN2227-7080.
↑"Apple - Safari - Safari Extensions Gallery". Apple. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
↑Brinkmann, Martin (September 24, 2022). "Mozilla reaffirms that Firefox will continue to support current content blockers". Ghacks Technology News. Archived from the original on July 22, 2025. Retrieved April 25, 2024.
↑"Edge Add-ons uBlock Origin". Archived from the original on April 8, 2025. Retrieved April 16, 2025.
↑"About Google Chrome's "This extension may soon no longer be supported"" . GitHub . 2024年12月26日にオリジナルからアーカイブされました。2024年12月26日に取得。