Seems like Piped and Invidious are both on their last legs. Public instances on both services are pretty iffy, they go down fairly often now. Freetube works well on desktop but no real way to sync subscriptions and watch history to a phone. Self-hosting Piped/Invidious might be the solution but I don’t know if it’s worth the upkeep when YouTube is actively fighting against it.
LibreTube has the most beautiful UI although it’s sometimes unstable. Latest releases have been a lot more stable and improving. Has integrated Sponsorblock. I like it more than other clients as they either have worse video quality if they don’t use Piped or just look bad, like the NewPipe client. Keep in mind that without an account, no matter what option you use to view, you will not be able to be part of a community. I like that I am kind of shut off, as I do not like the way the Algorithm keeps me from my favourite channels and feeds me shit, but this makes Youtube essentially just a video platform instead of a social media platform.