I see a lot of comments focusing only on the ad-free part of Freetube, however there are really good reasons to use it apart from that. I was a ad-blocker Youtube website user and I switched to only using Freetube (even before the "adpocalypse") because of changes Youtube has been making/removing. Here are some things that made me switch:
- mega fast compared to youtube website (especially for firefox users)
- separates videos/shorts/live on your subscription feed into custom tabs (can also hide any)
- search results are actually usable and shown in a grid (No "People also watched|For you|Previously watched|Latest" every 1/2 results taking your whole screen)
- can customize scroll over video player action (skip, volume, playback rate)
- set custom forward/rewind and playback rate intervals
- set default video quality
- >2x playback rate (up to 10x)
- distraction free settings (you can hide almost anything you want on each page, examples: trending/recommended videos, the likes/dislikes, the live chat, live streams, premieres, profile pictures in comments and much more)
- hide videos from specific channels
- display video titles without excessive capitalisation option
- easily export/import your subscriptions to any format
- multiple local accounts each with its own subscriptions
The "still needs some work" things:
- playlist support is not in yet (you can save videos but they all go to one place and you can't order them)
- some parts of the UI, although very usable/fast, need some love (looking at you settings page)
- tab support would be great instead of having to open new windows