Out of the box it can play audio in the background, and now that extensions are available you can block ads as well. You don’t really need constantly updating 3rd party clients or questionable firewalls anymore if you just want usable youtube on a phone.
Have a look at NewPipe app, might be of interest.
I did use that for a while. Google was always finding ways to break it. I don’t use youtube on my phone often and when I had newpipe 9/10 times it was broken when I wanted to use it, so it didn’t make it onto my next phone.
Why install the app when all the same features work in browser? Not only did I save storage space, I also kept privacy as well as reduced CPU/RAM usage on my mid-tier phone using the browser that was already installed.
Why install the app when all the same features work in browser?
This is a pretty fair argument. It reminds me of the early 2010s when the sentiment everyone had was “we have an app for that”. We don’t need more specialized apps (which really aren’t that specialized - most of these do exactly the same thing), we just need intelligent solutions using what we have. Back in the day that was responsive layouts, today it’s browser extensions.