How to make YouTube run faster & better! - ANY Browser & ANY OS
1This video was recorded on that 11 inch MacBook Air, so I apologize for the quality.
These 2 methods should work no matter what OS or computer you are on, this doesn't just apply to laptops either.
Seriously, turn off Ambient Mode, there is no reason to have it on, the lighting effects are barely noticable, and take way too much power to run for how useless they are.
On PCs, if your drivers aren't the ones that are tailored to your specific model of machine, the browser trick might not work at all, as they have no way to efficiently use the hardware within it, so make sure you have that for this to work.
Edge seems to perform this trick as well, so it is safe to use that if you want to.
On Macs, the choice of web browser is more important to fix the power issue, on MacOS 10.14 and above, the browser Orion works best for YouTube playback, however you can just use built-in Safari, which should automatically do this.
Chrome or Firefox from one update to the next might do it as well, but this doesn't last until the next version of browser and I have no idea why. They should get their crap together.