Others have already covered the sharp edges elsewhere in this thread.
My specific (brief) experiences include: Instead of playing the video..
- Wait forever while it spins.
- Crashes randomly. Repeatedly.
- No way to reference previously watched or liked videos.
- Atrocious, non-functional search.
Have all these bugs have been fixed in the past 6 months?
Bar about a day when youtube-the-site made an update that broke newpipe's parsing, I've never seen the first two.
There's a history tab, I don't really use ot but looking over it now it looks decent, and can sort by most and last played.
The only issue I've had with search is that it doesn't return playlists, but my typical flow is to go to the profile page and follow a link from there so it hasn't bothered me.
Just as another data point, I use and enjoy NewPipe, but definitely experience the first two points listed above- I get crashes and failures to load not infrequently.
Perhaps a hardware issue, or NewPipe handles spotty connections poorly or something.
That being said, I can't find the cast button you're talking about.
I also can't find the sharp edges you mention[0] could you give other examples? In my experience I've just had it do what it says on the box with no fuss.
[0] though I'll admit my tastes are minimalistic and I avoid cloud tools as much as possible - either or both of those may color my views.
For example, I see not having access to Youtube account information as a positive.