Really? My main reason for still trying to use adblockers instead of NewPipe or another frontend is that every one I've tried is slooooow. Is there a setting I should change or something???

Alternative interfaces like NewPipe, FreeTube, etc. work fine for what they are, but I prefer using a web browser because I actually like Youtube keeping track of my watch history and its recommendation algorithm works (reasonably) well for me.

All the alternative interfaces have privacy from Google as a primary design goal, so they want you to import your subscriptions and let them keep track of what you watched locally, but the consequence and downside of that is that it doesn't synchronize across devices (e.g. FreeTube on my Linux desktop and NewPipe on my phone). At least not without a bunch of extra effort on my part manually importing and exporting, anyway.