A lot of these alternatives allow you to keep track of subscriptions without a Google account and actually show a chronological feed (which IMO is one of the most annoying things about the official YouTube app). For mindless watching TikTok is my default.
I actually have tried to use TikTok a few times. However I live in a country where I'm not a native speaker and there is no way to set the TikTok region to anywhere except your geographic location. Even when using a VPN, reinstalling the app, and creating an entirely new account, it still knows exactly what country I'm in. That's scary enough to make me not use it much.
But I was bored so I figured, the algorithm is supposed to be good right? It should learn I want English videos pretty quickly.
Nope, I spent about an hour searching exclusively for videos in English, and 99% of all the recommendations were still in Vietnamese. I guess I should be grateful that one privacy invading timewaster is unavailable to me!
I have two modes of watching YouTube:
1. When I want to learn about something. Then I use a search engine to find the video, and your setup would be fine
2. When I want to relax and watch generally interesting informative videos. Or sometimes comedy or animation.
I subscribe to a range of channels and use the YT recommendations for the second mode (which sucks but is barely usable).
How do people watching YT with no account handle this second mode of watching?