I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot. For me, YouTube is great when I’m just trying to get a quick feel for how something works—like seeing a UIFlow block setup in action or how someone wires a sensor. It helps things “click” faster compared to reading docs alone.

But yeah, I’ve run into the same issue you mentioned—some videos skip key steps or assume you already know part of the setup. That’s where things break, especially with M5Stack since small details (like firmware version or library differences) can mess everything up.

What’s worked best for me is using videos as a starting point, then keeping the official docs and forum open alongside. Most of the time, if something doesn’t work exactly like in the video, the answer is usually buried in documentation or a forum thread.

I did follow a YouTube project once for a simple ESP32 sensor dashboard. It mostly worked, but I still had to tweak pin configs and update a library to get it running properly. So yeah—not really “copy and paste,” more like guided trial and error.

If you find a creator who explains why they’re doing something instead of just showing steps, those are worth sticking with. Otherwise, I treat videos more like demos and rely on docs/forums for the real detail.