There are alternative front-end apps. Not for iPhone, because of course not, but Android has Newpipe at least. For desktop, I haven’t looked but sure there are some.

> And there is so much shit in between the good stuff.

Yeah discovery is really hard on there. So much loud crap :(

There's Restricted Mode[1], but it's extremely aggressive to the point of hiding too much.

I personally use the drop-down feature to tell YouTube I'm not recommended in a particular channel or video, as well as maintain a manually updated BlockTube list for channels and keywords. I've also heard that clearing stuff like your watch history is a good way to flush weird recommendations. Generally, disabling all targeted stuff goes a long way to ward off the craziest stuff. On top of disabling the main trending page so it goes directly to your subscriptions.

[1]: https://www.howtogeek.com/770192/how-to-turn-off-restricted-...

Well, YouTube Kids?

That's my problem with it as well... I keep on clicking "I'm not interested" for all kind of clickbait brainless content, but they keep on coming back.

recently, I started getting videos with less than 500 views from tiny channels. I guess YT is trying to be fair and send traffic to those channels. But I felt those videos were just clickbaits. That's one problem with the algorithm.

Positives of YT, mentioned in other comments also: Algorithm is very good in general. Quality of content is good lately (or at least you can stick to such content). Easily replace Netflix time. Comments section is also good. YT Premium is worth it.

YT almost got beaten by Insta and TikTok but survived. And the YT app on a smart TV is much better than Netflix and others.

I don't have this issue at all. All my recommendations are pretty accurate and I don't see much mindless content. I have been using YouTube for years now, have over 1000 videos on my Watch Later list, and probably watch multiple hours of YouTube a day. Maybe it just knows me better.

The only thing that works for me is to say that I dont want any recommendations from that channel. It seems brutal at first but actually I think it's entirely fair and solves the problem. If a channel posts a video about why the S23 is the best phone to buy then I can safely ignore that entire channel. The likelihood of him also posting christian documentaries into the same channel is basically zero.

The following are all web browser add-ons:

"Unhook" hides the related videos, comments, shorts tab, suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending tab and other distractions on YouTube pages.

"BlockTube" lets you block channels or videos by ID, title keywords, or comment content.

"Channel Blocker" puts an X next to the channel name on each video. Clicking the X instantly and permanently removes the channel from search results.

"uBlock Origin" removes ads from the beginning and within videos.

"SponsorBlock" skips over a variety of uninteresting sections of videos via crowdsourcing. You can choose which types of sections you want to skip.

I need to do a lot of work on this extension but I made one that filters out negative and political content: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/healthy-surf/

Also works on old.reddit.com/r/all which is its main use case for me

For excellent front-end alternatives, without recommendation, see:

https://invidious.io

Click "Use invidious" and bookmark 1-2 of the choices