It goes even beyond that.
With a dedicated app, you go into the store and install it and then you have it in your apps that you then can place everywhere.
With a website, you need to have the browser, navigate to that website each time. And yes, you could put a link to that website on your home screen as well but not many user are probably aware of that being an option.
I know that but I still would prefer a dedicated app because it is easier to manage and use more features of my phone. For example, I just tried it on my android phone and the link to a website always opened a new tab in my Firefox.
Then I can manage the notifications of that app depending on what I want it to notify me about.
I can’t do that specifically for a single app or website in a browser.
On the other hand, I also wouldn’t want to miss a website because I am not always on my phone and, in some cases, it is way more annoying to do something over the phone because I am just not used to it (like writing this comment). Doing that over a website version that I can access on my PC is much easier and convenient.
I tried it but it doesn’t seem to work for me correctly or maybe I am doing something wrong. I patch the YouTube app and install it but as soon as I close and open it, all the changes made by the patch are apparently gone. Shorts that are hidden on the first start after the patch are visible again, ads seem to be reduced but still happen occasionally.
I disabled the default YouTube app, gave the patched version a different name, disabled auto update, repatched it but nothing seems to stick after opening it again.
And then the whole “I have to download the apk so that I can use it” because I don’t have rooted my phone is just inconvenient.
I stick with my yt-dlp server and Plex instead.