YouTube has announced a new feature called Custom Feeds that lets Google's generative AI, Gemini, build a personalized video feed simply from a written description of what you want to watch. The regular recommendation feed stays untouched, while users can now create several dedicated tabs for different viewing purposes.

Just describe what you want, and a feed is built for you

With Custom Feeds, users type a natural-language description of the videos they want into a prompt box, and Gemini interprets that request to assemble a feed. Examples include requests such as "a feed of video podcasts for my 30-minute commute" or "relaxing commentary and chat videos," and the feature reportedly supports detailed instructions about what to include, what to exclude, and what to prioritize.

The resulting feed appears as a dedicated tab pinned near the top of the YouTube homepage. It does not replace the standard recommendation feed, which continues to cover all genres as before. Users can create multiple Custom Feeds for different purposes and switch between the tabs as needed.

A new path that doesn't rely on watch history

Traditional recommendations have mainly relied on automatically analyzing watch history and viewing patterns, whereas Custom Feeds lets users state their intent directly in words. That said, YouTube's own systems still decide which videos qualify and whether they meet content policy; Gemini's role is limited to interpreting the prompt. In other words, users gain a way to clearly state the direction they want, rather than direct control over the underlying algorithm. A YouTube executive commented that the goal is to help people navigate a library of more than 20 billion videos more easily.

Rollout begins next month, with wider availability to follow

Custom Feeds is expected to begin rolling out on web and mobile as early as next month, with early access likely limited to users in certain regions at first. The ability to run multiple Custom Feeds at once is expected to expand to a broader range of environments over time, with wider platform support also reportedly under consideration.

Summary

YouTube's new Custom Feeds feature lets users build a dedicated video feed just by describing what they want in natural language to Gemini. It adds purpose-specific tabs on top of the existing recommendation feed rather than replacing it, and is set to roll out on web and mobile starting next month. It gives viewers a new, word-based way to shape video discovery, alongside the watch-history-driven recommendations they've relied on until now.

Source: TechCrunch