YouTube Unveils Custom Feeds Built From Conversational Prompts

YouTube used its Made on YouTube 2026 event on September 23, 2026 to unveil Custom Feeds, a feature that lets viewers create and save multiple homepage feeds built from conversational prompts. The company said the feeds will be available to users in the U.S. on web, mobile, and TVs soon.

Johanna Voolich, YouTube’s vice president of product management for viewer products, described Custom Feeds as a way to create a dedicated tab for specific moods, routines, or a viewer’s latest interests, kept easily accessible from the homepage. Viewers can craft and save multiple feeds tuned to different interests, she wrote, with examples including an evening wind-down feed built around long documentaries and a feed for discovering new DIY creators.

In a companion post covering the full event, CEO Neal Mohan wrote that viewers will be able to design their own homepage feeds using conversational prompts such as “Witty podcasts for my daily 30-minute commute,” and save multiple custom feeds to the home screen. Those saved feeds update automatically with fresh recommendations, he wrote.

How the Custom Feed Works

YouTube’s official Help documentation for the feature describes it as experimental and currently available in English in the United States, and notes that availability may change. Using it requires signing in to a YouTube account, turning on watch and search history, and setting the device language to English. Each feed is private and unique to its account, meaning other viewers cannot find or access it.

The documented experimental version maintains one custom feed at a time, and a prompt expires after 30 days of inactivity, at which point the feed is no longer available and the viewer can enter a new prompt. Prompts must follow YouTube’s Community Guidelines, and viewers can flag a feed that misinterprets a request through a Something Wrong option in the feed’s three-dot menu. The new announcement, by contrast, describes saving multiple feeds.

Videos watched from a custom feed are added to the account’s standard watch history and may influence main Home recommendations, according to the documentation. Refreshing the feed generates a new set of recommendations based on the prompt, a process YouTube compares to refreshing the standard Home feed. Watch time accrued through a custom feed contributes to a creator’s watch time and monetization in the same way Home feed viewing does, and the company said it is continuing to monitor the feature’s impact on views, watch time, and revenue.

Ask YouTube Adds Shopping Tools

The same viewer announcement brings new shopping capabilities to Ask YouTube. Viewers can ask questions and follow-ups through an interactive experience, whether on the go or through voice commands while watching on TV, according to the company. When a viewer searches for reviews of a specific product, YouTube may return organized video recommendations, such as a comparison table that includes product attributes and categories based on the viewer’s preferences. After opening a video, the viewer can continue asking questions about the product directly on the watch page. Mohan’s post described the expansion as turning Ask YouTube into a product recommendation guide.

The Rest of the Made on YouTube Slate

Mohan’s post noted that more than 20 million videos are uploaded to the platform every day as it detailed the rest of the event’s announcements. For viewers, Shorts can now be organized into dedicated seasons and episodes, which YouTube said makes it easier to watch microdramas and series. Google’s own roundup of the event, also published September 23, 2026, highlighted audio features including Ask Music for track discovery and Podcast Lineup, which delivers curated weekly podcast summaries.

For creators, YouTube introduced a conversational editing tool across Shorts and the YouTube Create app that guides users through each edit, starting from suggested prompts or their own, and can automatically trim pauses or reorder footage for pacing while allowing manual edits at any time. YouTube Studio adds personalized guidance on early drafts, thumbnail generation matched to a channel’s style, and video A/B testing of up to three different cuts. Likeness detection is coming to mobile phones, and YouTube said it will begin integrating speaking-voice detection with facial detection to improve match accuracy.

Live-streaming updates include Live showdowns, which let creators merge their streams for head-to-head competitions, real-time auto dubbing, and an expansion of the Watch With feature to long-form videos. On the business side, YouTube said its Shopping affiliate program will reach 35 countries by the end of the year, with added support for Amazon in international regions and product tags that automatically update to show localized offers based on where viewers are watching.