> It even forces its own built in screensavers to run instead of the OS one if the app is left paused

Eh? YouTube is my most-used app on Apple TV by a country mile and I’ve never seen this, I get the tvOS screensavers. Is it because I have YouTube Premium maybe?

I agree though, it is a garbage app. Everything on a TV, from the built-in apps to Roku boxes to Apple TV use basically the same app (certainly the same layout) and it’s really quite bad.

This is because of YouTube‘s obsession to build cross-platform, lowest-common-denominator apps, resulting in mediocre experiences across all the platforms they support, and rarely excellent on any single platform.

Their Apple TV app is basically a web view which doesn’t conform to any of AppleTV’s UI principles. Same as their YouTube TV app. It’s sad.

N=1 obviously but I use the YouTube app a lot on my Apple tv and think it works fine? I don’t get anything besides the native screensaver and they even added the option to browse comments natively.

Only bug seems to be a black screen for a second when I close the app (maybe a bug with suspend?).

Are you running with your AppleTV set to Dolby by default? The black screen is switching between SDR (maybe HDR) YouTube and Dolby Vision Home Screen.