YouTube could soon give you more control over your recommendations
A new test gives hints that users may gain control over their YouTube recommendations.
YouTube is letting users customize their home page
YouTube is testing a new feature called “Your Custom Feed”, giving users more control over what appears on their Home page. It’s a small change that will see your own custom feed tab appear next to the regular Home tab, but it signals that YouTube is shifting how it thinks about its recommendations.
Typically, YouTube relies on the algorithm to guess what viewers want to watch. However, this tool would let users pick themselves. As TechCrunch notes, this could be huge considering YouTube’s reputation for questionable assumptions before serving up an overwhelming amount of that content.
How does it work?
The feature is currently limited to a small group of testers. If you’re part of the experiment, you’ll see “Your Custom Feed” appear right next to the Home tab. Once you click into the new tab, you can type in a prompt to reshape your recommendations.
Say you’ve been watching a lot of music tutorials lately and want more, you could type in something like “piano tutorials” and YouTube will adjust your Home feed to surface more of that. Prefer production content? You could ask for tips on “how to record vocals at home”.
It’s an easy way to give users more control over their suggested content that steers the algorithm in certain directions, rather than being thrown random suggestions.
The bigger picture
This feature follows a broader theme of platforms appearing to give users more control over what they see on their feeds too. For example, TikTok recently introduced its own controls, including the option to decide how much AI-generated content appears on your For You Page.
For the music industry, this shift is important. More user control means viewers can focus on what they truly care about. If someone wants more music-focused content, they can literally type that into YouTube and make it happen. As an artist, that means you could reach more people who are intentionally seeking out your content, with those fans more likely to stick around in the process.
That matters for your content strategy too. If someone wants to see more “independent pop artists” or “production tips for beginners”, you want to be in the pool of videos YouTube is recommending.
Wrapping up
YouTube’s “Your Custom Feed” test is still early days, but it fits neatly into the wider trend of platforms giving users more control over the content they see. Whether it becomes a permanent part of YouTube likely depends on how testers respond.
But if rolled out widely, this feature has the potential to help artists reach audiences who are actively searching for content like theirs, not those that are just caught up in the algorithm.
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