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Jason Lo
Jason Lo

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uBlock Origin Extension with Dia Browser

#browser

Recently, I moved from using Arc browser to Dia browser to try the integrated AI features. The change that I first noticed was that uBlock Origin extension is no longer available on Dia browser, a chromium based browser.

It turned out to be the new version of Chrome, 140 has turned on the following features:

  • ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported
  • ExtensionManifestV2Disabled

Solution

In order to get around it perfectly, I refined the solution a few times.

1st iteration

A fast immediate workaround is open terminal on Mac and execute

/Applications/Dia.app/Contents/MacOS/Dia \
  --disable-features=ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported,ExtensionManifestV2Disabled
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It opens the Dia browser with the two enabled features disabled. Then, go https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm to download the no longer supported uBlock origin extension.

2nd iteration

Hooray! It worked just fine! Wait! Hang on! Isn't it means I need to open Dia browser through terminal every single time?! It's quickly becoming inconvenient. I need a one-button-click solution!

Automator to save the day!

I created an Automator application to run the script.

/Applications/Dia.app/Contents/MacOS/Dia --disable-features=ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported,ExtensionManifestV2Disabled >/dev/null 2>&1 &
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It is important to have >/dev/null so that it redirects stdout (normal output) to /dev/null.

Then 2>&1 redirects stderr (error output) to wherever stdout (1) currently goes.

Finally the last & is to run the process in the background so your terminal/script continues immediately. It is important that the script does not block waiting for the process to exit.

Beautify the application icon

Look at the default automator icon makes me sad. :(

I found that it's actually pretty straightforward to do to replace it with the original Dia icon!

  1. Right click the actual Dia application icon
  2. Select "Get info"
  3. Click on the application icon at the bottom and press Cmd + c to copy to clipboard.
  4. Right click the new automator application icon
  5. Select "Get info"
  6. Paste the copied Dia icon
  7. Job done!

Final iteration

Happiness only lasted for a few days until I found another issue.

I have an habit to click the Dia icon to focus back to the opened Dia window. Don't ask me why I didn't it this way, it's just my preference! :P

The problem is when I click the Dia icon again, the script tries to open Dia application instead of focusing the current window. A prompt then shows up to tell me off Dia is already opened!

To get around this, I finally updated the automator script to check if Dia is already opened. If yes, activate and focus the current Dia window. Otherwise, open a new Dia application.

if ! pgrep -x "Dia" >/dev/null; then
/Applications/Dia.app/Contents/MacOS/Dia --disable-features=ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported,ExtensionManifestV2Disabled >/dev/null 2>&1 &
else
osascript -e 'tell application "Dia" to activate'
fi
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osascript is a macOS command-line tool that lets you run AppleScript from Terminal, shell scripts, or Automator.

Hooray!! I finally managed to get ublock origin extension working on Dia browser seamlessly.

Caveats

  • This is not a permanent solution to have ublock origin extension installed and working on Dia or new chromium based browsers since future Chrome updates may still block or break this workaround.

  • New ublock origin updates might be limited, incompatible, or unavailable under this setup.

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