Yeah yt-dlp has been my strat this whole time anyway. Also Piped and Invidious get the job done when i'm too lazy to type in one short command for every video I watch.
Also, specifying format with yt-dlp is unnecessary ("-f 22") if you have ffmpeg installed iirc because it automatically selects the highest quality, thus shortening the command even further.
Higher resolution videos actually have better bitrates on youtube. Like if you select 4k even if your monitor is just 1080p, the video will look much better.
All the more reason just to use yt-dlp. I know it takes a tiny bit of time to set up, but it's well worth it. I'm able to download 20-minute videos that would have otherwise buffered in less than a minute. I can simultaneously queue up a bunch of videos, and watch them with zero stuttering.
You can also put "alias y=yt-dlp" in your ~/.bashrc to minimize it to "y". Or set up a keyboard shortcut to a script that executes the command with your clipboard content.
Or do the same with "mpv" instead of "yt-dlp" to watch the video stream directly without downloading.