Lightweight ad blocker uBlock Origin ported to Microsoft Edge

uBlock Origin is a lightweight ad blocker that consumes fewer system resources than the likes of Adblock Plus. The open-source ad blocker is officially available as an extension for Chromium and Firefox, but a New Zealand-based web developer has ported the extension for Microsoft Edge.

Nik Rolls has forked the project on GitHub, and a working prototype of the extension is now available for download as a .zip file for those on the Edge Preview. Interested in taking a look? Here's how you sideload the extension on Edge:

  1. Download the .zip file and extract it to a folder.
  2. Enter about:flags in Edge's address bar, and toggle Enable extension developer features.
  3. From the Extensions menu, click on the Load extension button and select the folder where you extracted the .zip file.

Here's a list of issues that are yet to be fixed, per Nik:

  • Downloads (settings backups, etc). Edge doesn't allow downloads from extensions yet, or I've not found the way. I'm working on it but if it's not supported then I may be blocked.
  • Updating lists: unfortunately this is a big one. You currently can't download updates and are stuck with the ones in the current build, which is a very small subset of the full database. This is my top priority to fix.
  • Possibly other functionality that I haven't been able to verify yet; this is very experimental!

Edge will disable sideloaded extensions every time you exit the browser, so you'll have to re-enable manually. The extension is still in a pre-release stage, so you're bound to encounter bugs. If you have any questions or suggestions for the developer, shout out in the comments.

Download from GitHub

Thanks for the extension Nik!

Harish Jonnalagadda
Senior Editor - Asia

Harish Jonnalagadda is a Senior Editor overseeing Asia for Android Central, Windows Central's sister site. When not reviewing phones, he's testing PC hardware, including video cards, motherboards, gaming accessories, and keyboards.