June 1 Tech news round up: Chrome to disable Manifest V2 extensions soon, Windows 11 will let you copy text from photos on your phone, YouTube is causing some issues for ad blocker users

Manifest V2 extensions will soon be disabled in Chrome

Google has revealed the timeline for deprecating Manifest V2 extensions in its Chrome browser. Developers will be forced to use the new Manifest V3 API in their add-ons. The migration to Manifest V3 will reduce the capabilities of extensions, which could result in some extensions losing some features. This will affect ad blockers such as uBlock Origin severely, as it will not be able to use regex-based filters, dynamic filtering, and some per-site switches. The developer has released an alternative add-on, called uBlock Origin Lite, which works with Manifest V3, but offers limited functionality compared to the original extension.

Other Chromium-based browsers such as Vivaldi, Brave and Opera have a built-in ad blocker which will block ads and trackers without relying on extensions. Chrome users will need to consider switching to one of those browsers, or to move to Mozilla’s Firefox, which will continue to support Manifest V2.

The Mountain View company says that Google Chrome will start disabling Manifest V2 extensions in the coming months. Users who have a Manifest V2 extension installed will see a banner that notifies them of the end of support for the plugins. This banner will start appearing in the browser from June 3. Google says that Enterprise users will be able to continue using Manifest V2 extensions until 2025.

YouTube is making some changes that may affect ad blockers

Several users have reported about experiencing a rather strange issue with YouTube. The reports claim that videos are jumping to the end when they tried to watch them. Users attributed this behavior to ad blockers, because the videos worked fine after they disabled the content blocker in their browser. Some reports also said that videos were automatically being muted because of their ad blocker.

Most users who experienced the automatic skipping say they were using the Adblock Plus extension. But a statement by Google seems to suggest that this may not be a bug, but rather intentional. The company says that it has made some changes to improve the performance of its streaming service, and these may result in suboptimal viewing experiences for ad-block users. The uBlock Origin extension seems to have been unaffected by this problem.

Windows 11’s Phone Link app will allow you to copy text from images

Microsoft has announced an update for the Phone Link app which will let you copy text from images that are in your phone’s library. This feature can come in handy for capturing text in banners, signs, screenshots, etc. Phone Link’s optical character recognition will allow you to select an image, and highlight the text content in it. A button in the app lets you copy the text, and paste it in any other program that you like, for example, Notepad, or your browser. You can even use it to grab text in a language that you don’t understand, and use a translation service to read the content.

The OCR feature in Phone Link feature is exclusively available for Android devices, it is not available for iPhones because of some limitations in iOS. Microsoft has made the new version of the app available for users in the Release Preview Channel of the Windows Insider Program. The company plans to release it along with the Windows 11 version 24H2 update, aka the Windows 11 2024 feature update, that is set to be released later this year.

Windows 11 version 24H2 will not support AC3 Codec

Microsoft is making several changes to Windows 11 in its upcoming feature update. Not all of these changes are beneficial for users, one such unwelcome move is the removal of support for AC3 Codec. It is unclear why the Redmond company has opted to remove AC3 compatibility, but a support page on the official website does confirm the deprecation of the feature. This basically means that users will not be able to use Windows Media Player to listen to audio or watch videos that are encoded in the AC3 format.

The good news is that you can use third-party programs to play AC3 content. So you can play the videos and audio files in VLC and similar applications that come with their own codecs. Alternatively, you can install codec packs such as LAVFilters to add system-wide support for AC3 codec, and this will allow you to play the media in any apps including Windows Media Player.

YouTube Music now lets you identify songs by humming

Have you ever wondered what a song was, but you couldn’t remember its name or the lyrics? Well, there are apps like Shazam that allow you to hum into the app, and it magically discovers the right match. Guess which app has gained this feature? YouTube Music now supports the humming search function. Users need to open the app, tap on the search icon, and then on the sound wave icon. This will allow you to hum for a maximum of ten seconds, and the app will identify the song and play it for you.

Google Assistant already supports the feature, but adding it to a dedicated music app like YouTube Music makes a lot more sense, as it can be readily added to a playlist.

Say goodbye to WordPad, Cortana and Tips

Microsoft has announced that it will remove three apps from Windows 11 in the next major update, i.e. Windows 11 24H2, which is set to release in Fall 2024. The three apps that are being deprecated are: WordPad, Tips, and Cortana.

WordPad has been available in all versions of Windows since 1995. The text editor however has stagnated for a while, as opposed to Notepad, which has been gaining features steadily over the past few years. Notepad now supports tabs, auto saves documents, and even restores the previous session when you start the app. Microsoft has confirmed that it will add autocorrect, spellcheck, and a character count to Notepad. So it’s fairly obvious that WordPad has not only been abandoned, but has been pretty much superseded by Notepad.

Similarly, Cortana has been replaced by Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, Copilot. The AI-app has been deeply integrated in Windows apps including Notepad, Paint, Edge, to name a few. And it is highly popular among users, unlike Cortana which had a very low user base. The Tips app which provided useful hints for users has been deemed obsolete, and will be removed from Windows 11.