In the past several months, I've moved to using an RSS Reader + Watch Later Playlist + DF Tube extension (you could use whatever to nuke parts of the UI you dislike). This has greatly improved how I use YouTube. This method allows me to be significantly more intentional with what I'm watching and how much time I'm spending. The only frustrating part is that YT shorts still come through RSS, but they are much easier to avoid in a reader than YT's UI.
The excellent “Play”⁽¹⁾ app (available for iOS, macOS, Apple TV and Vision Pro) can also use these feeds, plus give you the ability to conveniently save other videos to “watch later”. Highly recommended!
In addition to the main purchase price, this app charges 3.99/month for:
-following channels
-following playlists
-removing shorts
and many more features on top of those.
Can also use google sheet + app scripts + youtube api to add new videos from channels in playlists. Sheet can trigger every few hours to keep things up to date.
It does get more complicated if monitoring too many channels since execution will timeout due to sheets limit. But can make it to pickup where previously timedout.
Bonus using API gets you video info so you can filter by length (shorts), keywords etc. Limitation is ~150 videos added per day due to API limits.
I used this to make a Youtube viewer "application" that lists my subscriptions most recent videos, and i can watch them when i get a chance. Just a list. no thumbnails, no click bait, no random algorithm recommendations, just stuff i want to watch.
