Out of the box it can play audio in the background, and now that extensions are available you can block ads as well. You don’t really need constantly updating 3rd party clients or questionable firewalls anymore if you just want usable youtube on a phone.
yes, it’s true, especially useful for IOS users, but for Android I recommend YouTube Revanced. you can block ads, there is sponsorblock and many others, such as disabling the “shorts” function
https://github.com/revanced