Frustrated with Freetube, what do you use on desktop

Basically Most videos don’t load on first try for me on Freetube. so I have to go back and forth to reload the video hoping this time it will load? they have removed the reload button, and the team are just closing issues on GitHub that demand reinstating the reload button. Plus comments have stopping loading as well.

Invidious doesn’t work half of the times. and piped is dead.

What do you recommend using on desktop. or is paying for youtube Red the only option left?

I’m probably being too lenient but if I can still watch videos on Freetube I’m not gonna abandon it, especially not for the official client, I’m pretty sure most issues are caused by Youtube shenanigans that affect all the alternative clients, FOSS Devs have always worked around those shenanigans before, and if Youtube does succeed in breaking all alternative clients & viewing methods forever then I won’t watch Youtube videos anymore, yeah it’ll suck but I’d much rather do that than go back to using an official Google product.