Your question has been mostly answered, though if you’re wondering why v0.26.0 is missing as well, it’s because of some issues with reproducible builds that should hopefully have been resolved now.

I thought the app was being rewritten and that this version was only gonna receive fixes until the rewrite is over.

That’s correct. The “New” and “Improved” changes are mostly from pull requests that were opened before the rewrite announcement, or are important quality of life improvements.

Changelog

New

• Add comment replies
• Allow reordering playlists
• Show playlist description and duration
• Allow resetting settings

Improved

• [Android 13+] Restore custom notification actions
• Request consent for update check
• Allow notification play/pause while buffering
• Reorder some settings

Fixed

• [YouTube] Fix comments not loading, plus other fixes and improvements
• Solve vulnerability in settings import and switch to JSON
• Various download fixes
• Trim search text

Where do you find images that you could get a link to? I don’t understand that feature

The app now shows links to images that NewPipe fetches like thumbnails, avatars and banners. You can find them in the video descriptions and in the ‘About’ channel tab.

Changelog

New:

• Support channel tabs
• Select image quality
• Get URLs to all images

Improved:

• Accessibility of player interfaces
• Better audio selection for video-only downloads
• Option to include playlist and video names to shared playlist content

Fixed:

• [YouTube] Fix getting like count
• Fix player not responding popups and crashes
• Selection of wrong languages in language picker
• Player audio focus was not respecting mute
• Playlist item addition occasionally not working

This tutorial is pretty good as an introduction to modding APKs:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ApksApps/comments/oat3qu/tutorial_how_to_modify_apk_files_for_premium/
The example used is unlocking premium features but the principles are the same for disabling DRM.

Never thought of it that way. That does make me more positive towards their monetization and pricing, as it’s much preferable to an IPO in my eyes. I’m afraid they might eventually do one regardless, though.