If you use the default piped instance then it's usually overloaded. You can either try finding an alternative or just host your own, personally I do the ladder I rented a VPS for 20 bucks a month and I host my own pipe there
To add on to this for iOS/macOS/iPadOS if you use safari you can send YouTube to your TV through airplay. Skips all the ads and if you use sponsorblock skips that too, so if you are too lazy to install smart tube this is a setup that works nicely.
as far as I see freetube is just written in html, css and Javascript, then all of that thrown into an Electron app. you can run these elements without Electron in any browser, it just won't have access to as many device features as the app does.
I've built a web version here from the source just to try it out. it's somewhat buggy but it does work