Author: Stefan Van Damme

Updated the article on 16 December 2022, as the Google Chrome team announced a change to the end of life to keep Manifest V2 for an uncertain time. That is when the new next Chrome extension Manifest V3 is ready and stable for the developer and users. You can read the sunset timeline on the Chrome developer blog.

Chrome extension Manifest V3 is a major phase. However, Support for the Manifest V2 browser extension will end this year on March 2023 (the previous date was on 31 December 2022). And new and existing browser extensions must use Manifest V3 technology to become available on the Chrome Web Store. Therefore, the Turn Off the Lights developers is already working very hard to get the Turn Off the Lights browser extension ready for you. As you can follow the Open-Source development on the public Turn Off the Lights Chrome extension Github page.

Chrome extension Manifest V3

The Manifest version 3 brings huge benefits for the users, that for better security, performance, and privacy.

As the Google Chrome team said on this developer documentation page:

The Chrome extensions platform continues to evolve. The specific course we’re steering focuses on improvements to security, performance, and privacy — while preserving or extending the capability of extensions and keeping a webby developer experience.

Source: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/platform-vision/#where-were-headed

However, the development of the Turn Off the Lights browser extension from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 involves some massive code changes. And takes time to get right for the desktop and mobile users. Even the Camera Motion and Speech Recognition features will not be available anymore because of the limation of the Manifest V3. Because it cannot access the <video> and <audio> elements on the background script page, to get the speech analysis and hand gesture detection.

Although Google Chrome said that Manifest V3 is stable for developers, it still contains some huge bugs that need to be fixed in order to get a good experience for the users.

Join the next Beta version

Today, you join the next Turn Off the Lights browser extension with Manifest V3 for Safari web browsers (iOS and macOS). The Safari web browser is already ready and stable for Chrome extension Manifest V3 technology. When joining the TestFlight and make sure you have the latest macOS 12.4 installed and Safari web browser version 15.5.

Download the Turn Off the Lights Safari extension version 4.4 (beta):
https://testflight.apple.com/join/pj7BWqeJ
macOS 12.4 and higher and iOS 15.5 and higher

The current beta brings also these new improvements:

• IMPROVEMENT Manifest V2 to Manifest V3
• IMPROVEMENT atmos vivid, the glow in and fade out are visible
• REMOVED Speech and Camera -> not possible anymore because of the service worker background page
• IMPROVEMENT PIP-mode
• ADDED double click on the slider to get the default 80% opacity in the palette panel
• ADDED whitelist/blacklist the game controller
• IMPROVEMENT Night Mode feature to render well and instantly
• ADDED auto Night Mode option in double click panel

Feedback

We love hearing from you. If you run into any issues with the Safari running the Chrome extension Manifest V3, we welcome your feedback on the TestFlight app (and choose “Turn Off the Lights for Safari” in the list) or your Turn Off the Lights Support bug report about web technology. Therefore, filing issues really do make a difference. Please do not forget that If you love the free Turn Off the Lights browser extension make a small contribution. So as to continually improve this experience and get the app available for everyone at the Store. When Chrome extension Manifest V3 is stable and ready in Google Chrome it will be available for all Google Chrome stable users.

There is a new Naver Whale extension on the market. But what is Naver Whale? The Naver Whale is another free web browser developed by the South Korean technology company Naver Corporation. And it is one of the fasted growing web browsers on the Korean market. The Whale browser has a unique sidebar, which can be switched off in the menu, on the right side. Naver whale is based on the Chromium web browser. So web page rendering works the same as it does in Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers.

This sidebar provides quick access to mostly NAVERs own web services as well as bookmarks and some handy tools like a music player and a toolbox with a calculator, timer, memo, translation, bookmarks, and a calendar. It is the ideal web browser if you live in Korea. In the Whale web browser, you can also customize the experience by installing Naver Whale extensions.

Today we introduce the launch of the Turn Off the Lights Naver Whale extension, so you can enjoy the video and web at its best in your Nave Whale web browser. So you can pop out the chosen video you want to see and keep your focus.

You can experience all the features from the original Turn Off the Lights Chrome extension. That includes to focus the current video player and dimming the rest. Get a harmonious dark mode on all websites that you can change to your favorite colors, Mouse Volume scroll, force YouTube to play the highest video resolution, etc. It all supports the features of the Chrome extension. Furthermore, it is free and Open-Source.

Download the Naver Whale extension

You can download the official Turn Off the Lights Naver Whale extension from the Whale Store. As it is available in more than 54 languages including English, Korean, and Japanese.

If you love the free Turn Off the Lights Naver Whale extension on the Naver Whale web browser, do not forget to support our hard work by making a small contribution. So that we can continually improve this experience and get the app available for everyone at the Store.

Web browsers are bringing the hands together for a uniform browser extension platform. And that will brings the browser extension to a new Manifest version 3. With the main focus to bring performance and privacy improvement to the users. But also some new strings that need to translate for the next Turn Off the Lights browser extension.

Tomorrow Google Chrome release its 100 version. That is a huge milestone in the history of the Chrome web browser. And later this year it will end the support of the Manifest version 2 Chrome extension. So there is a huge code work to be done in converting this to the latest requirement for the web browser. And translation is one of these important tasks. So that to make it understandable for all the users around the world.

Translate

The browser extension support up to 54 languages. And today we published on the Crowdin project page new strings for the browser extension Manifest v3. That from a string in the Options page to the web browser user interface themes. If you know a person that writes one of these languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Asturian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kabyle, Kannada, Korean, Kurdish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish (Argentina), Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu (Pakistan), and Vietnamese. You can help to make this free browser extension understandable for these languages.

Honor list

Each individual contributor will be honored, and his name will be visible on the Translation Community web page. Furthermore, you can ask for a digital certificate to prove you are one of the members that translate the free and Open-Source browser extension.

What are you waiting for Translate it Now! And if you know a friend that writes one of these languages, do not hesitate to share this news with them.