You forgot the VPN.

Yeah, no. I’d rather use a clunky website in a browser then installing dozens of specific apps.

How do you trust the third parties?

How do you trust anyone? At some point you either do or don’t, because it’s just not possible to verify everything in your life.

The alternative would be not using an VPN and for me personally I trust my VPN provider a lot more than my luck of not getting chaught by chance.

you have to have complete trust in the service provider.

Not completley, there is 3rd party audit companies that can verify claims made by the VPN providers, like confirming no-log policy and such.

So install and updated it without going through the store apps … you can download all the installers directly from their website. Absolute non-issue.

Have you considered converting to AV1 instead of H265?

I have a similar issue with my mac+chrome having to convert H265 -> H264 (even though it should be able to play it), but it has no trouble direct-playing AV1 for some reason.