A while back I got introduced to ReVanced. It worked great. I could finally turn my screen off and listen to YouTube while doing stuff with it in my pocket. Then it stopped working and I confirmed this with a couple friends. Had to update. This happens a few more times. Get a new phone more recently, decide to try Newpipe and already have Brave for ad free browsing. Newpipe stops working. Start using Brave, it still works. Now I know why Newpipe stopped working.
On the downloader spectrum of things, for years I swore by a simple app for Firefox called Easy YouTube Downloader. Sure 1080p downloads were locked behind a paywall I was never going to pay for, but I prefer 720p just fine when downloading stuff from content creators I enjoy for quality and space purposes. Then the MP3 conversion download option gets paywalled. Okay, I'll use another method for that. More recently, 720p video downloads were put behind that same paywall. I uninstalled it. Now, my dumb old ass still hasn't fully puzzled YT-DLP out, I'll give that a shot in the near future again sure. But for now I have a program called Tartube that I've been using on another site anyway, which saves YouTube videos, same quality, in webm format.
Now, the kicker is, some few months ago YouTube started doing something VERY drastic. If you were detected using an adblocker(I use uBlock Origin), YouTube gave you a warning and a three strike rule. You could watch three videos. Then YouTube prevented you from watching more until it couldn't detect the adblocker anymore. If I recall, some workaround got posted that involved Tampermonkey or some bullshit, but I'm too lazy to mess with that so I just did the next best thing. That download button is still there, if I can't watch the vids on YouTube I'll just download them and watch 'em offline just fine. Get fucked. Unsurprisingly I'm pretty sure I stopped seeing this happen, they probably figured out that preventing users using adblockers from watching videos on their site wasn't working. But boy are they still trying to make you turn off that pesky adblock.