watermelonpuppy

Personally I dont use the YouTube (iOS) app for this reason. The browser version is quite decent, allows for more control just as using an adblocker and removing recommendations as mentioned.

If you would like to keep the native youtube.com experience, in addition to disabling the watch history, which gets rid of the first screen recommendations, you can also use a filter list such as https://github.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/blob/master/YouTub....

I use it with AdGuard and it not only blocks the side cards of video recommendations on what to watch next, it also blocks comments which can be an endless pit of doomscrolling on its own.

This way if you want to watch a video the only way to do so its to search for it, otherwise you won't ever get anything else recommended to you.