When people post YouTube links, is there a cool open source way to watch it on mobile without going through youtube, firefox, or downloading adblockers?

On Android, install newpipe from f-droid and YouTube links should go to it automatically. No ads, lets you download videos, subscriptions are entirely local on your device, but right now display of comments is messed up. The last isn't a big deal for me. Ymmv.
- Nice I have fdroid I can easily do this godbless

Tubular on F-Droid is a fork of Newpipe (which is great too), "A fork of NewPipe that implements SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike"
It's my favorite front end so far.

Yes! You can use an alternative front end - you’ll have to watch in your browser.
There is a bot on some communities that will post the Piped Version. The other option is to use a version of Invidious which you can find here.
Clicking on a YouTube link will take you to the YouTube app if you have it. You’d have to copy and paste the link into the search fields of the above.
The other option is to use xvanced. I have not used it in a long time and I’m not sure of the current status but it should work.

On Android there are lots of ways. Newpipe or Grayjay is probably the easiest. Revanced is a little more complex but is also good. You could also use Firefox with ublock origin.

If you're on android, you can remove the setting that opens YouTube links on the native app. My YouTube links always open in firefox, with unblock and in a private window. So no ads, no permanent cookies. Lately the quality has been going down as Google forces adblockers users to have a worse experience, but still works.

If on Android, use UntrackMe. When clicking on any YouTube link, or even Reddit, Twitter etc., select this app to open the link with. It will automatically redirect you to a privacy friendly frontend. Link YouTube to Invidious. You can customise the instances you want to use.

Another option other than new pipe is to download a YouTube apk and the revanced app. Ad free YouTube is what comes out of that.
- This solution sounds easiest but also must technical haha I still don't know how to use apks or whatever I don't even really know what they are but I think I got it figured out anyway! Thank you for the replies

Great question, I usually close those immediately.
- So do I you have to press it like three times or four times to close it and it's really making me super stupid irrationally angry at a dumb phone and I'm so mad about it haha
  
  Meh. The phones give us less and less control and plenty to be annoyed over; but the ads are greedy, evil Google's fault. I'm taking heat over their horrible ~~air~~ ai (see what I mean? And it did wait until I couldn't see the word anymore!) autocorrect and/or packet loss on my phone. I really am biding my time, until I have time and money to switch to Fairphone or find alternative software that works with my hardware. Frankly, I wouldn't have a smartphone at all, if I didn't need it for certain things. Best of luck in your future endeavors, friend.

Newpipe, Libretube, Clipious. Those are front ends for youtube. I would recommend reading about them and cheling them out.
- Nice
  
  Libretube and Clipious are not fronts ends, they just use Piped and Invidious front ends respectively.

I don't know why you don't want to go thru YouTube or use an adblocker but if you have uBlock Origin installed on your Firefox browser as you should then it automatically blocks YouTube ads aswell.
- I have ad blocker on my computer but when I'm on my mobile phone everything just sucks
  
  You can install ad-blocker on Firefox mobile aswell. Atleast on Android you can.

So, among the other options, many communities here have a bit that drops piped links for all YT links.
- Yeah I'm liking all the suggestions it's a pretty cool thread haha little bit overwhelming but I'll get through it I think F Droid is going to be my best bet

https://photon.lemmy.world/post/lemmy.world/13959063
Not quite as good as Tesseract (😉) but the dev finally did break down and add Youtube support.
Edit: My bad. Thought you were looking for a Lemmy client that handled YT vids.

Piefed includes a piped.video link on every youtube post.
For example, try this one: https://piefed.social/post/83825

I found all of the open source frontend to be slow and unreliable.
So I just use firefox with uBlock origin.