FreeTube is fantastic. I use it on a daily basis and that's the only way I really use YouTube at this point. I understand why people like Invidious, but FreeTube can route through randomized Invidious instances whenever it's fixed, and even when it's broken, FreeTube has its own API as you mentioned. At this point, I just use FreeTube on desktop and Grayjay on mobile. Since I started using that setup, I haven't had too many issues with YouTube blocking me.