The now-largely-unusable (thanks to API key limitations) mps-youtube command-line utility still remains the most useful interface to YouTube I've ever used.
https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube
- Runs without any browser at all.
- From a console.
- Without video, if you so specify.
- Enables full search, can be limited to music posts only, includes both content and account search. That is, you can search for content matching terms, or for a username / account matching a term. Also playlists IIRC.
- Can play based on a given account's videos / postings.
- Individual items can be saved to a queue. Those may be ephemeral (session-only), or saved to disk.
- Content can be downloaded if preferred.
- No YouTube account required, no play history on YouTube.
The only feature missing that I can recall is the ability to blacklist specific accounts. A chief problem with clickbait, propaganda, baiting, and radicalisation channel proliferation is that the activities carry little risk. Yes, YouTube itself occasionally removes high-profile cases, but people themselves cannot say "never show me anything from this source again", at least last I checked. Curation of sources, and killing high-noise sources, continues to be my most effective techique for boosting S/N.
That said, mps-youtube was and remains the best interface I've found for searching for, curating, and managing online video access to my interests and without any tracking or ads, both of which have massive negative social externalities. I'd used it fairly extensively for my own preferred use of the site: finding lectures (and occasionally book-readings or similar content), and queuing up playlists or downloading archives of those. Works on absolutely minimal hardware.
YouTube apparently did all they could to kill this, and have largely succeeded.