UBlock Origin got turned off with my most recent Brave browser update. Any alternatives?

Firefox still allows you to use extensions. Ublock origin is definitely in there, and You're Fired is listed (with like two downloads).

Brave claims their built-in adblocker works "just like uBlock Origin".

If that's not true, I recommend Firefox. I use it regularly: 99% of sites work (only games and interactive demos require Chrome) and performance is unnoticeable except on rare sites that are especially badly designed.

Did you try ublock origin lite?

Same dev and everything, just made to work with chromium after the update that killed the original

Brave has a built in blocker. Though with their track record it might suddenly do some weird stuff in the future. For a less shady chromium alternative I'd recommend Vivaldi. And otherwise Firefox as others also recommended already.

For YouTube, I have some custom css and a userscript that makes things a lot better. I can share those as well if you like. They hide shorts and also make subscriptions a list again.

Edit:

For adjusting websites to be less cluttered and distracting I highly recommend using Stylus to adjust the styling. I use to hide elements but also adjust things like spacing, fonts, etc. It does require some css knowledge but allows for much more control over website looks as well.

Edit2: Was on my phone earlier. Here is the custom css I have for youtube which basically removes shorts from most views

ytd-rich-item-renderer[rendered-from-rich-grid] {
    --ytd-rich-item-row-usable-width: calc(100% - var(--ytd-rich-grid-gutter-margin) * 2);
    width: calc(var(--ytd-rich-item-row-usable-width) / var(--ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row) - var(--ytd-rich-grid-item-margin) - 100px);
    margin-right: 100px;
}


ytd-rich-item-renderer[is-responsive-grid] {
    width: calc(100% / var(--ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row) - var(--ytd-rich-grid-item-margin) - 100px);
    margin-right: 90px;
    background: #1e1e1e91;
    padding: 5px;
}


.shortsLockupViewModelHostOutsideMetadataEndpoint {
    font-size: 1.4rem
}


ytd-reel-shelf-renderer,
ytd-rich-shelf-renderer[is-shorts],
#sections a[title="Shorts"] {
    display: none !important;
}

As I mentioned, the userscript mostly restores list view for subscriptions. I am not sure you'd be interested in that and I need to clean it up a bit so I haven't included it.

As far as my case for using stylus goes, I also use it to adjust things like the default font on a lot of websites (no monospace on blogs), font size, line width, all sorts of things that make websites more readable for me aside for removing distractions.

I have ADHD and I can't live without cosmetic filtering.

AdGuard's MV3 extension supports cosmetic filtering, which is the ability to remove empty spaces caused by removing ads. uBlock Origin Lite has chosen to avoid using any permissions in its Lite version, which is why it doesn't support cosmetic filtering. It's not a limitation of the API.

AdGuard also has a tool to select an element to remove, which it sounds like is what you're after.

I also use it to remove moving graphics and other things on some web stores that break my focus.

You may wish to consider enabling prefers-reduced-motion, which is usually handled at the OS-level. Note this disables most animations in the OS as well, such as maximizing/minimizing windows.

Did you install uBO through the chrome app store, or is it the bundled uBO that comes with brave? It has a special set of like 6 MV2 extensions that it bundles in and supports, with uBO being one of them. I haven't heard any news of them removing support for this, so it should be supported for a while to come still.

Try going to the following:

1.Settings page

2. Extensions

3. Manifest V2 extensions

4. Then enable uBO

Or try going to brave://settings/extensions/v2 and enabling uBO there.

Q: Assuming I have to escape from Brave and back to firefox, does uBlock still block adds on YouTube? Brave does a killer job of that.

Why did you use uBlock Origin instead of the built in Brave Shield at all? Unless I'm missing something the two engines are on par in features as far as ad-blocking goes. Brave Shield can use the same blocking lists and cosmetic filters as uBlock Origin but not having the drawback of being an extension. Take a trip in the content filtering options in the settings and see for yourself. I'm on mobile now but I can even see built-in options for blocking youtube shorts and recommendations. I say give it a go.

someone recommended matrix3 to me, which is similar to umatrix (what ubo was built to replace), but using manifest v3 and should be compatible with modern chromium based browsers

of course, i would encourage you to use another browser anyway, for reasons unrelated to anything technical