I have the Garmin instinct 2 and you don’t need to pair it to a phone. Pairing it only provides a backup and a few pieces of information you can’t get without the pairing. That way the data stays completely on the watch.
Should be no tracking. As long you are using a vpn, your public IP address shouldn’t be visible to YouTube and freetube doesn’t load the tracking scripts used by YouTube. It makes api requests to fetch only the video content.
I have the Garmin instinct 2 and you don’t need to pair it to a phone. Pairing it only provides a backup and a few pieces of information you can’t get without the pairing. That way the data stays completely on the watch.