I tried Newpipe for a while, but it takes SO long to load every video, I lost the patience.
I see no reason why this would address OP's concern.
Thanks, prefer the web UI though.
Get one of the many YouTube extensions that allows you to change that stuff
you don't need an extension to manually change video quality. if it kicks you down, turn it right back up. it will obey your preference for that video.
after doing this on a few videos, it seems to stop dropping the quality automatically for me.