im using newpipe on android and adding the rss feeds to newsblur so I can watch on desktop. its actually really good since you get away from their suggestions side bar and autoplay (and the UI).
newsblur let's you organise things into subfolders too which is helpful
the other thing in going to start using is youtube-dl to download my watch later videos and then use something like emby or plex to watch them. maybe do the same with videos that I want to keep so I don't have to worry about then disappearing every second day
So if I’m reading you right, “YouTube is great, provided you work around their UI, feature set and arbitrary limitations by replacing it all with 3rd party software.” Yeah google’s really nailing it. /s
Well youtube has a lot of everyday person content that nobody else does. This is mostly inertia - they got big years ago, and it is hard to switch. There are other good alternatives, but none have the users or mind share.
Movies are better served elsewhere, but there is a lot of things that you just can't find elsewhere.
Personally I like the suggestions (everyone complains about clickbait and such, but I'm lucky that I never get those), but Newpipe is definitively a better app than the official.
newsblur let's you organise things into subfolders too which is helpful
the other thing in going to start using is youtube-dl to download my watch later videos and then use something like emby or plex to watch them. maybe do the same with videos that I want to keep so I don't have to worry about then disappearing every second day