Hi all, well its been a labour of love. I have much more appreciation for the youtube devs after trying to recreate my own version. The benefits of SkipVids.com :

1) No Ads. Skips sponsorship messages too thanks to Sponserblock API 2) Free Background Playback 3) Free PiP (picture in picture) 4) Lite - it uses about 1/5 the resource of YouTube 5) Private - we store nothing 6) View Dislike count, thanks to RYD API (not 100% accurate) 7) Casting is supported when using SkipVids.com on desktop 8) and so much more

Give it a go, its not perfect but its pretty good IMHO.