YouTube Trials Custom Feed, Letting Users Control The Algorithm

YouTube is piloting a new feature that aims to give users more direct control over their video recommendations. Dubbed “Your Custom Feed,” the feature introduces a new tab next to the regular Home page that – when available – lets users type simple prompts to shape what appears in their feed.

The concept is simple but potentially powerful: instead of passively relying on algorithmic guesses, users can more proactively steer their feed. For instance, typing a prompt like “cooking tutorials” or “travel vlogs” should help surface content more aligned with current interests. This represents a shift from indirect controls such as “Not interested” or “Don’t recommend channel,” which have often been criticised for being cumbersome or ineffective.

According to YouTube, the experiment is currently limited to a subset of users, and the company hasn’t committed to a full rollout yet. The hope is that by offering some level of conversational control — a kind of feedback loop where users can say what they want — the platform can improve user satisfaction and reduce the problem of irrelevant or repetitive recommendations.

Naturally, this also provides a way for the platform to identify somebody’s actual interests beyond looking at algorithm-based data, too. A more personalised feed shaped by user prompts might reward creators in niche categories as users seek specific kinds of content rather than broad algorithmic recommendations, and could allow advertisers to target users that are looking into specific sub-topics – for example, marketing to fans of specific video games, rather than the “video games” topics as a whole.