YouTube unveiled custom feeds on 23rd September, 2026, letting viewers describe the videos they want and have Gemini build a feed around it. Each feed gets its own tab at the top of the home page.
The Brief
- YouTube’s custom feeds turn a typed description into a recommendation feed, assembled by Google’s Gemini AI model.
- Each custom feed sits in its own tab at the top of the YouTube home page, beside the regular recommendations.
- YouTube’s own examples include a feed of video podcasts for a 30-minute train commute and a mood feed for unwinding.
- Support for building multiple custom feeds reaches YouTube on web and mobile starting next month, the company said.
A prompt box now sits above the recommendations
Custom feeds start with a single text box, introduced at the Made on YouTube event. Viewers type what the feed should cover, and Gemini pulls videos around that request. It can be a narrow interest or a mood, such as “relaxing commentary videos to unwind with.“
Requests can run long. Because an AI model reads the prompt, viewers can spell out what a feed should feature and what it should leave out. They can also say which content deserves priority. That exclusion option is the interesting part, since telling a recommender what you don’t want has mostly meant tapping dislike and hoping it sticks.
Announced at #MadeOnYouTube this year:
— News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle) September 23, 2026
• For viewers: New custom homepage feeds, instant recommendations with Ask YouTube, and Shorts Series on your TV
• For creators: Conversational AI editing in Shorts, better feedback in YouTube Studio, new ways to collaborate with brands,… pic.twitter.com/j7ubaK6918
YouTube’s main feed stays where it is. Viewers can hop between the full recommendation stream and any custom feed they’ve built, depending on what they opened the app for. A pinned tab means a commute feed or a wind-down feed is one tap away, with no fresh search needed. Google’s Made on YouTube recap pitches the feature in one line: “Curate your homepage with custom feeds based on your mood.“
Emily Moxley, VP of Product Management for Viewer AI, framed it as a discovery fix in a pre-brief with reporters. “There’s over 20 billion videos in the YouTube corpus, so you’re always one search away from a treasure trove of topics,” she said. The feature puts Gemini, already spread across Google’s AI product lineup, directly between viewers and that catalog.
Rivals got to prompt-built feeds first
YouTube is arriving late to an idea several platforms already ship:
- Bluesky popularized custom feeds years ago to stand apart from X, then added Attie, an AI feed-building app, this year.
- Meta’s Threads opened public custom feeds in 2025.
- Instagram’s Blend builds a shared Reels feed for a user and their friends.
- X rolled out AI-powered custom feeds this year.
- Spotify took its Taste Profile controls to the U.S. on the same day YouTube made its announcement.
Scale separates YouTube’s version, since every prompt draws on the catalog Moxley described. Creators in niche formats could gain the most, because a precise prompt may surface channels the main feed rarely pushes. The same event also brought Ask YouTube for instant recommendations and Ask Music for track discovery. Taken together, Google appears to want typed requests sitting alongside the behavioral signals behind AI-ranked social feeds.
What YouTube has shown so far is a prompt and a tab. How faithfully Gemini honors an exclusion after weeks of use can’t be judged until the feature is in people’s hands. The announcement also leaves gaps.
Will custom feeds launch in every country at once? Does prompt text shape ads or the main feed? Is there a cap on how many feeds one account can keep? Can a viewer edit a prompt after the feed exists?
Viewers planning to try it should write specific prompts that name a format and say what to leave out. YouTube says requests can carry that level of detail, so vague asks waste the feature. The launch also extends YouTube’s recent push into AI tools for podcast listeners.
Support for creating multiple custom feeds starts rolling out on web and mobile next month. Until then, the only YouTube algorithm viewers can steer is the old one, a dislike at a time.
