I think part of the reason why NewPipe is so slow is that they are in the middle of a rewrite/redesign. All the focus is there and the current app is in the maintainance mode.

This is the reason I switched probably mor than a year or two ago. YouTube remains a cat and mouse game. Strange things with those forks is that they always add some more streaming sources Mike BkliBili but keep the old stuft. Actually soundcloud only works very limited lately.