Yes, frustrating, hopefully it should become better in one of the new upcoming versions: Alternative to port 8444..need help...VPN? - #8 by cultiv
For now, all of the things mentioned are good and the only ways we know how to help.
I will mention, additionally, if you have multiple machines and one of them is in sync then you can point to your internal IP / port 8444 as well (if it’s open) to sync over your local network which should work great.
If all else fails: keep trying to add some of the ip’s / node.chia.net a few times, and be patient, don’t shut down and restart the application all the time, that seems to make it take even longer in my experience.