Normally I use NewPipe on android. It's an alternative YouTube app that can play videos in the background, doesn't have ads and allows me to download videos and music.

I had the YouTube app disabled with adb on this phone for all the time I've had it. For backup there's always the browser YouTube page.

I must have done something wrong and accidentally clicked install on the YouTube app again, so it activated and was back to normal on this phone.

Holy hell is that app a terrible advertising machine. Every time I click on a YouTube video now I get sent straight to it and it always plays ads and also has text ads all over the GUI so I can't even read the channel info etc while I wait for the ads to go away.

I don't know how people deal with that it would completely make me want to stop using YouTube.

Please do yourself a favor and install NewPipe or ReVanced (I think that's the name of basically the same app but with sponsorblock additionally). Both are on f-droid.org app store as well. Less important because you can manually use NewPipe but you could also disable the YT app with adb so it disappears from your phone.