For those consuming YouTube in homeopathic dosages - uBlock Origin is effective for YouTube ads in browsers (incl. mobile Firefox on Android [1]) and NewPipe is a wonderful native Android client (supports background play, downloading audio-only for podcast episodes, etc). Of course, yt-dlp for command line downloads. NewPipe sometimes breaks, so you want to use their F-Droid repo for faster updates.
Just switched to Apple TV 4k and life without SmartTube is rough. https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV helps with some of it, but the official interface is just straight trash compared to what SmartTube has accomplished.
[1] Firefox is _the_ killer app for Android, esp., if you add more anti-adblock/paywall filter lists (NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe, Quora logins, etc): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamengland1/miscfilters/m... https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clea... https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/mas...