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YouTube to soon add personalised home page recommendations through ‘Your Custom Feed’

The goal of the new test is to address customers' displeasure with algorithm-driven recommendations that occasionally fall short

By entering particular prompts, you may actively design your feed rather than passively skimming through a stream of items that might not be relevant to your interests.(Anastasiia Sapon/The New York Times)

It can occasionally be difficult to find a YouTube video that genuinely reflects our interests. With its new experimental feature, ‘Your Custom Feed’, the video-sharing site seems to have identified this problem and is attempting to solve it.

The goal of the new test is to address customers’ displeasure with algorithm-driven recommendations that occasionally fall short. It has been documented in the past that YouTube’s algorithm regularly miscalculates user intents. If you view a few Disney videos, for example, the platform may assume you are a devoted fan, which might lead to an overwhelming amount of similar content, even if that is not what you really want.

Users will see ‘Your Custom Feed’ next to the typical ‘Home’ button on the site for those taking part in the experiment. You can enter prompts based on your interests by clicking on it.

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By entering particular prompts, you may actively design your feed rather than passively skimming through a stream of items that might not be relevant to your interests. For example, you can encourage YouTube to prioritise similar material in the future by simply putting “cooking” into the custom feed.

Recently, YouTube introduced daily scrolling limits for users in the Shorts feed to help manage viewing habits, especially for those under 18. The platform announced the wider rollout of ‘Edit with AI’ in the YouTube Create app, which automates the drafting process from raw footage.