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It's kind of an extreme measure, but there is an extension called "Unhook" that you can use to remove recommendations, and only show your subscriptions. It has a bunch of other tweaks and has made the Youtube UI tolerable for me, personally.

>1. Subscriptions are essentially useless. The UI focuses entirely on recommendations and doesn't show me videos from channels I am subscribed to unless I actually dig into the `library/subscriptions` UI.

I don't think Subscriptions are useless, the Subscription feed only show the published videos from your subscriptions, and in reverse chronological order, with no algorithmic shenanigans.

> Shorts. Shorts are everywhere and I don't want to see them, ever.

Me too, you can remove Shorts (on a browser) using this uBlock Origin filter https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts

What platform are you watching on? In the mobile app there is a subscription tab on the bottom navigation bar. On the browser and at least on the Roku TV interface there is a Subscriptions tab on the side navigation bar. No need to dig into your library.

I don't understand why "digging" into the subscriptions UI is a big deal. It's one click away from the home page and is where I normally start when visiting youtube.