YouTube: New homepage can be personalized via prompt

YouTube is introducing a personalized feed on its homepage that users can design themselves via text input. The feature is initially being rolled out to logged-in US users on mobile devices and desktop, YouTube writes in a community post.

A new button labeled “Custom Feed” is to appear at the top of the homepage. Tapping it opens a text input field: users describe what videos they want to see. “Give me something different from what I normally see in my feed,” YouTube writes as an example of use. Or: “Help me switch off after work with guided meditations under 10 minutes.”

The feed created this way then updates continuously and always delivers new content on the described topic. Anyone who wants to keep a feed can save it; it then appears as a permanent button at the top of the homepage. The feed prompts can also be edited later.

More control over recommendations

The function requires an active YouTube history, as the custom feed takes previous viewing habits into account. It is only available to logged-in users. YouTube has not announced when the feature will be rolled out beyond the USA.

Previously, users could only indirectly influence the recommendation algorithm – for example, via the “Not interested” option or by excluding individual channels from suggestions. The custom feed replaces these detours with direct text input: instead of teaching the algorithm what you don't want to see, you simply describe what you want to see. YouTube first launched the feature as an experiment in November 2025, at that time limited to a small test group. Whether and when the function will also come to Germany is still open.

At I/O, Google also introduced an AI search for YouTube: “Ask YouTube” is a new conversational search function for YouTube that compiles relevant videos from the entire catalog and provides structured answers with embedded video sources.

(dahe)