Or Grayjay. I find it crashes a lot less than the *pipe apps. https://grayjay.app

Exactly. Isn't this supposed to be Hacker news? I find it hard to believe that there are people on this site without an adblocker.

Believe it. I'm one.

I'm curious, care to elaborate on why?

Fear of messing up my computer and no way back.

Or smart tube and revanced.

A competitor to YouTube needs to support paying the creators not demand content for free.

I'm fine with using youtubes platform to browse creators and then supporting independently those I watch/want to.

No one demanded anything! I'm not certain that the firehose of "content" that youtube is creating is all that valuable to humanity, and I won't subject myself to ads to support it's existence.

This isn't about you, it's about people who make videos for you.

YouTube's competitive advantage is their ability to pay video makers, not their video playback tech. And to make a competitor that has any kind of traction, this problem needs to be solved in a more reasonable way than "I'll somehow find a way to pay someone maybe".