I don’t have a solution for you but yep this is the new and “improved” widget. Nothing wrong with your phone :(.

+1. I love this guy because he’s not just another one of those new urbanism YouTubers complaining that every American doesn’t have 10 trains showing up at their house every minute and anyone that disagrees is mentally compromised (see: “car brain”). He instead focuses on feasible, practical, incremental solutions to our problems over shouting about the “kill all cars with fire immediately” solutions.

I didn’t post him because I figured the audience on Lemmy would eat me alive for saying all that.

1 more dude I skipped but I’ll put here - Stuff Made Here - Insanely skilled engineer who seems to be able to make just about anything. Skipped because his thumbnails are horribly clickbaity.

Thanks for the list, I’m sure others will appreciate it!

I’m actually subscribed to almost all of those channels lmao. I skipped several because I’m being picky, and I mean picky. You probably won’t agree with a lot of my decisions. Here’s what I mean…

• I did a thing - forgot about him I’ll add him to the list
• Micheal Reeves - Last real video was a year ago
• Backyard scientist - Unsubscribed a while ago due to clickbait. From a quick glance his videos seem fine now though.
• Mark Rober - Video quality has been going downhill. More and more clickbait, and videos seem to spend a lot more time than necessary on “look at our happy family fun time we’re having.”
• William Osman - I like him just not enough to put him on the list

Gaming

• EthosLab - most authentic Minecraft YouTuber around. No trash clickbait, cringeworthy attempts to appeal to children, ad spam, etc. Just a dude chilling out and playing Minecraft.

• Battle(non)sense - Tests various input lag reduction tech + strategies. Input Lag: Low DPI vs High DPI - turns out increasing your DPI can significantly reduce input lag! AMD AntiLag+ vs Nvidia Reflex - turns out not only does AMD’s solution trigger anti-cheat, but it also offen increases system latency.

• Marblr - High quality analysis of weird game behavior. Mostly Overwatch for now. Overwatch: The Effectiveness of Shield Spinning

• People Make Games - Videos about games and the gaming industry. Highly accessible to folks not familiar with the industry. Making Sense of VR Chat, the Metaverse People Actually Like

• NoClip - Crowd funded feature length video game documentaries. Making of Horizon Zero Dawn

Makers

• ColinFurze - builds crazy stuff and does an amazing job of it! Currently building an underground garage at his house that connects to his underground tunnel system.

• I Did a Thing - Australian man with a great sense of humor. Makes ridiculous stuff. Giant Beyblade destroys stuff

…more in Honytawk’s comment below

Science + Technology

• Applied Science - In depth videos about random science-y things this dude finds interesting. No clickbait, just an excited dude talking about a project he tried.

• Atomic Frontier - A lot like Tom Scott. He’s also a rare case where the video is more interesting than the title/thumbnail. Generally focused on science-y topics + has shockingly high production value considering the dude seems to be an overworked college student.

• NileRed/NileBlue - Crazy in depth chemistry videos. Personally find NileBlue more entertaining as he tends to explore things he’s not that great at.

• Practical Engineering - Explanations of various civil engineering concepts.

Other

• Krazam - Legendary comedy channel focused on software engineering related topics. Most famous video - microservices.

• You Suck At Cooking - Short videos presenting recipes in an entertaining way.

• Studio Binder ; High quality videos about all things movie/video production. Owned by a movie production software company so you’re gonna see ads for it in every video but SponsorBlock gets rid of that with no issues. Ultimate Guide to Camera Movement - Every Technique Explained

Since this is built into the OS, your only options are modifying the app or modding the OS, neither of which are things I’m well versed in but here’s some stuff that can get you started if you’re feeling adventurous:

Modding the app: The way these actions work is android apps add a line in their manifest that registers them as handlers for “ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT”. Article on this.

I’d imagine you’d want to try and find a way to remove that registration from the app’s manifest. Couldn’t tell you exactly how but I know ReVanced lets you mod apps other than YouTube, so it could help with that?

Modding the OS: Since it’s built into the OS. If you can find the code that handles text selection actions, you could start with a custom ROM and add your own code that disables that action. Maybe even build a UI around it to help others with a similar complaint?!

Since nobody in the comments is being helpful I figured I’d do a little research for you. The TL;DR is apps can just put ads on your text selection any time they want + there’s nothing you can do about it. At least on my phone, the ads are hidden in the overflow menu so I hadn’t noticed them until I saw your post + checked in there. Perhaps on your device they show up because you have a wider screen?

Here’s another person with a similar complaint: https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/228224/how-to-edit-the-android-context-menu

Used S23