I'm using https://www.inoreader.com to manage my YouTube subscriptions. You don't need a Google account or API key (isn't that basically the same as being logged in?). There's a small delay for updates but it's really amazing.
I'm not affiliated with Inoreader but I've tried to make them appear on the front page here without success. Unfortunately I don't see anyone talking about them.
> You don't need a Google account or API key (isn't that basically the same as being logged in?)
Yeah, the key is a pain but once setup it's set and forget. Not being logged in is about not having my usage tracked at such a fine grained level - not only on my Youtube account, but across the entire Google ecosystem.
I used to use subscription groups to see videos of people talking about different subjects, If i felt like a certain subject i'd just watch those, but they got rid of that feature.
I am subscribed to over two dozens, but honestly I only care about 6-7 channels (they are all YouTube gamers and they are friends with each other). The rest, I just look at them on occasion. YouTube is quite good at suggesting what I want to see based on frequency and then recommend a few from channels I haven't been to a while.
Everything other than YouTube that ends with *Tube sounds like it might be a porn site especially one prepended with "Fresh" but that's probably just my own fault.
Youtube channels have XML feeds (seems like Atom with some custom extensions), so it should be possible to follow channel's latest videos even without using their API at all.
This is the solution I've always used. I wish that YouTube would make this easier to find though. Oddly, some channels include the HTML link tag in the page head, but many don't.
My use case is to load up my favourite channels every morning before I go for a jog, and download any recent stuff that looks interesting onto my music player. I wanted something that combined it all on one page, but grouped by channel.
I'm not affiliated with Inoreader but I've tried to make them appear on the front page here without success. Unfortunately I don't see anyone talking about them.