TL;DR
By the end of June 2026, Chrome 150/151 permanently disables every remaining Manifest V2 extension — including the classic build of uBlock Origin that millions still rely on to strip ads before printing or saving a page. If you've been leaning on an ad blocker to get clean PDFs, that workflow is about to break. Convert: Web to PDF is a free, Manifest V3, 100%-local extension that removes ads and clutter at conversion time — Article Mode strips a page to its main content, or you click individual elements to delete them before export. You don't need an ad blocker to get a clean PDF anymore. You need a converter that cleans as it captures.
What's actually happening to Chrome extensions this month
Answer first: Google is finishing the multi-year migration from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3, and the final step lands this month. With Chrome 150/151 rolling out at the end of June 2026, the browser stops running Manifest V2 extensions entirely. The developer-mode and enterprise-policy escape hatches that kept the legacy uBlock Origin alive through 2025 close for good.
Manifest V3 changed how extensions can intercept and modify network requests. The old webRequest blocking API — the one that let an ad blocker cancel a request for an ad server before it ever loaded — is replaced by declarativeNetRequest, which caps the number of filtering rules and hands the actual blocking decision to the browser. For most extensions this is a non-event. For content-blocking extensions with enormous, frequently-updated filter lists, it's a real constraint. uBlock Origin's developer has been blunt about it: the Manifest V3 build (uBlock Origin Lite) is deliberately less capable than the original.
If your daily browser still has the classic uBlock Origin pinned, here's the practical timeline:
| Phase | Roughly when | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| MV2 deprecation warnings | Through 2025 | "This extension may soon no longer be supported" banners |
| Soft disable + workarounds | Early–mid 2026 | MV2 turned off by default; re-enable via flags |
| Hard cutoff (Chrome 150/151) | End of June 2026 | MV2 extensions removed; no flag brings them back |
Edge, Brave, Opera, Arc and the other Chromium browsers track Chrome's extension platform closely. Some have signaled longer grace periods for specific APIs, but nobody is committing to maintaining a parallel Manifest V2 runtime forever. Treat end of June 2026 as the date the old way stops working.
Why this breaks a workflow you might not realize you have
A lot of people clean up a webpage before saving it to PDF without thinking of it as a workflow. The mental model is: "uBlock kills the ads and the cookie banner, then I hit Print → Save as PDF, and I get a clean document." Remove the ad blocker from that chain and the PDF fills back up with:
- Display ad slots (often as ugly empty boxes once the ad network fails to load)
- Cookie-consent overlays frozen across two pages
- Newsletter pop-ups captured mid-animation
- Sticky headers and "you may also like" rails repeated on every page break
- Auto-play video placeholders
The print dialog renders the page as it actually is. If the page is cluttered, the PDF is cluttered. An ad blocker was doing invisible cleanup, and that cleanup is what's going away.
The fix is not to chase a replacement ad blocker. It's to move the cleanup step into the tool that makes the PDF — so the cleaning and the capturing are the same action.
How to get a clean PDF without an ad blocker
Convert: Web to PDF is built on Manifest V3, so it isn't affected by the June cutoff at all — it'll keep working after MV2 extensions are gone. More importantly, it cleans the page at the moment of conversion, two ways:
Article Mode (the one-click option)
Article Mode runs the same Readability algorithm that powers reader views, isolating the main article — headline, body, images, captions — and discarding navigation, ad rails, comment widgets, related-post grids, and footers. One click and you get a document that reads like a printed article, not a screenshot of a busy webpage. This is the closest thing to "ad blocker + print" in a single button, and it works whether or not you have any blocker installed.
Click-to-remove (the surgical option)
For pages where you want to keep most of the layout but kill specific junk — a stubborn cookie bar, one promotional banner, a sidebar — open the extension and hover over elements on the page. Click to delete any element, with undo if you nuke the wrong thing. Then export. You get exactly the page you want, minus exactly the bits you don't.
Both run entirely in your browser. There are no servers, no uploads, and no account. That matters here: an online "URL to PDF" converter like PrintFriendly or PDFCrowd only ever sees the public version of a page, can't reach anything behind your login, and sends the URL (and sometimes the rendered content) to a third-party server. A local extension uses your already-authenticated session and keeps the whole job on your machine.
A quick word on extension safety after the MV2 cutoff
When a popular extension breaks, the search results fill up with "uBlock Origin alternative" listings — and that's exactly when sketchy clones and adware-funded copycats get installed by people in a hurry. A few habits worth keeping as the dust settles:
- Check the permissions. A PDF or content tool that asks to "read and change your data on all websites" and phones home to analytics endpoints is doing more than it claims.
- Prefer Manifest V3 extensions that don't make network requests for their core job. Convert: Web to PDF makes zero network requests during conversion — there's nothing to intercept and nothing to leak.
- Be suspicious of "free" tools that are free because you're the product. Our whole reason for existing is the opposite bet (more on that below).
Why we're not worried about the migration
We build small, single-purpose, Manifest V3 extensions and we don't collect data, so the platform change that's painful for ad blockers is a non-issue for us. Our manifesto commits to four things that make this easy: software stays small, logic stays in the browser, the tools stay genuinely free (not freemium), and privacy is the default rather than an upsell. There's no analytics package in our extensions to break, no telemetry pipeline to migrate, and no ad-injection business model that the new APIs threaten.
If you want the same "save it before it changes" reliability for files instead of web pages, Convert: Anything to PDF handles images, Markdown, CSV, HTML and more — also Manifest V3, also fully local. And if you'd rather spend less time fighting your browser and more time actually watching something good, CineMan AI puts IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes scores right on your Netflix and Prime Video cards.
Step-by-step: replacing your "ad blocker + print" habit
- Install Convert: Web to PDF from the Chrome Web Store. No sign-up.
- Open the page you want to save — a news article, a recipe buried in ads, a research paper, a receipt.
- Click the extension (or press Ctrl+Shift+P).
- For a clean reading document, click Article Mode. For surgical edits, hover and click the elements you want gone.
- Pick paper size, orientation, and margins. Preview.
- Download. The PDF is a real PDF — selectable text, working links, embedded fonts — not a flattened image.
No ad blocker required at any step.
Frequently asked questions
Will my ad blocker really stop working at the end of June 2026?
If it's a Manifest V2 extension — which the classic uBlock Origin is — then yes, Chrome 150/151 disables it with no flag to bring it back. Manifest V3 content blockers (including uBlock Origin Lite) keep working, but with the reduced filtering capabilities that Manifest V3 imposes. Check chrome://extensions for "may no longer be supported" warnings to see which of your extensions are affected.
Do I need an ad blocker to make a clean PDF?
No. That's the whole point of moving the cleanup into the converter. Convert: Web to PDF's Article Mode strips a page to its main content, and click-to-remove deletes any specific element before export. Neither depends on having an ad blocker installed.
Is Convert: Web to PDF affected by the Manifest V2 shutdown?
No. It's a Manifest V3 extension, so it's already on the platform Chrome is standardizing on. It will keep working after MV2 extensions are removed.
Does the extension block ads on the live page too?
No — it's not an ad blocker and doesn't try to be. It removes ads and clutter from the PDF you generate, at conversion time. The live page in your browser is unchanged.
Is it really free, with no catch?
Yes. No trial, no subscription, no premium tier, no account. We fund it ourselves rather than through ads or selling data. Our manifesto spells out why.
Does it work on pages behind a login?
Yes. Because conversion runs locally via Chrome's DevTools Protocol, it uses your already-authenticated session — so gated dashboards, webmail, and internal tools convert correctly. Server-based converters like PrintFriendly or PDFCrowd can't reach those pages because they only see the public web.
Which browsers does it support?
Any Chromium browser: Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera, Vivaldi. Firefox and Safari aren't supported because the underlying APIs differ.
Bottom line
The end of Manifest V2 is genuinely bad news if you depended on the classic uBlock Origin to tidy up pages before saving them. But the fix isn't to scramble for another blocker — it's to use a converter that cleans the page as it captures it. Convert: Web to PDF is free, fully local, Manifest V3, and built to outlast browser-platform churn. Install it once and your clean-PDF workflow survives the June cutoff intact.