YouTube will let viewers build their own homepage feeds from written prompts, moving part of recommendation control from viewing history to stated intent. The Custom Feeds feature, announced at the Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, creates separate homepage tabs from requests such as "Evening wind down with long documentaries" that refresh automatically with fresh picks. It will become available to users in the US on web, mobile and TVs soon. The shift matters because discovery becomes explicit: channels must match what people ask for, not only what the algorithm predicts.
Custom Feeds and shopping search for viewers
Viewers can save several custom feeds to the home screen, with each feed kept in its own tab on the homepage and updated without further input, according to YouTube. The examples point to task-based viewing, from winding down with long documentaries to discovering new DIY creators. In parallel, YouTube is expanding Ask YouTube into a shopping guide. Viewers can ask follow-up questions about products, including by voice on a TV, while searches for reviews can return organised video recommendations such as a comparison table of product attributes.
For creators, the core addition is a conversational editing assistant inside Shorts and the YouTube Create app. The tool uses Gemini to trim pauses, reorder clips and sync music to the beat, and creators can switch to manual editing at any time, the company said. YouTube Studio adds feedback on draft videos covering pacing, structure and storytelling, alongside thumbnails generated to match a channel's style. A new video A/B test allows up to three different cuts of a video to run against each other to show which hook holds attention best.
The release comes as YouTube defends its creator base against Netflix, a rivalry chief executive Neal Mohan discussed with The Wall Street Journal. The Journal reported that Netflix has signed deals with YouTube creators including the makers of "Ms. Rachel" and "Mark Rober's CrunchLabs". YouTube typically gives creators 55% of ad revenue from their videos rather than paying large sums upfront, according to the Journal. YouTube started funding shows directly in August to keep creators from licensing to Netflix, cautioned that a creator's posting strategy has implications for brand deals, and said Coachella will stream exclusively on the platform through 2030.
What this means for brands and content teams
For businesses that publish video or sell through creators, the practical effect is more precise but more fragmented reach. A viewer with distinct feeds for education, product research and entertainment can be addressed with formats tuned to each task, from long explainers to concise comparisons. The commerce tools support that split: Ask Studio will soon help creators answer brand briefs and build pitches, while the Shopping affiliate programme will expand to 35 countries by the end of the year. Small teams gain a clearer entry point through affiliate links and brief responses, while larger advertisers will need to manage more placements and more versions of creative.
The limits concern moderation, identity and timing of global features. YouTube is testing opt-in AI comment moderation that learns a creator's style, and likeness detection is coming to the mobile app, with combined speaking voice detection and facial detection planned for later this year. Shorts can now be grouped into seasons and episodes as Shorts Series on web, mobile and TV, after microdramas passed 6.5 billion views in the first half of 2026. Real-time auto-dubbing for live streams will start only as a pilot in early 2027, and "Live showdowns", where co-hosting creators compete for chats, gifts and Super Chats, arrive in 2027, so cross-border live formats cannot be planned around them yet.
The test will be the US rollout of Custom Feeds across web, mobile and TV and the affiliate expansion to 35 countries by year-end. Steady use of prompt-based tabs and faster matching of brand briefs with suitable channels would show that explicit requests are reshaping distribution. In that case, packaging, titles and first seconds will decide visibility as much as past watch time.
