YouTube on October 22, 2026 started rolling out custom feeds on its Home page to signed-in viewers in the United States, letting them describe in their own words the videos they want to see and saving each prompt as a separate feed at the top of the screen. Viewers without a YouTube Premium account can keep up to three active custom feeds; Premium members can keep up to eight. The same announcement, posted in the YouTube Help Community by Dave of TeamYouTube, redesigns the top bar of the mobile app with standard Live, Music and Movies & TV feeds and moves the Subscriptions feed, now renamed Subs, onto the Home tab.

The post carries no calendar date. It appeared in the YouTube Community about 24 hours before 20:14 UTC on October 23, 2026, and opens its custom feeds section with the words "Starting today."

In Short

YouTube now lets people in the US type a sentence like "guided meditations under 10 minutes" and get a whole Home feed built around it, and they can keep three of these feeds, or eight with Premium. It also puts Live, Music, Subs and, for some people, Movies & TV as one-tap feeds across the top of the app. For creators and advertisers, it means a growing share of what people see on YouTube Home may come from viewers' own written prompts rather than only from their past behaviour.

From one experimental feed to three or eight

PPC Land reported in May 2026 that YouTube was testing a single prompt-built feed, labelled in its Help Center as an experimental feature available in English in the United States, with one active custom feed per account. The October version keeps the US and English restrictions but changes the arithmetic. "If you don't have a YouTube Premium account, you can maintain up to three custom feeds at a time. YouTube Premium members can maintain up to eight custom feeds," according to the updated YouTube Help page for computers.

That split is the first time a paid tier has determined how many prompt-driven feeds an account can hold. It gives the subscription, which YouTube raised to $15.99 a month for individuals in the US in a change announced in April 2026, a discovery feature on top of ad-free playback. Neither the Community post nor the two Help pages say whether YouTube Premium Lite subscribers count as Premium for this purpose.

The Help page for computers now describes the feature without the word "experimental." Its availability note reads: "This feature is currently available in English in the United States. Availability may change in the future." The mobile Help page carries a near-identical line.

Who qualifies

The three documents set slightly different conditions. According to the Community post, custom feeds "are currently rolling out on mobile and desktop in English to U.S. based, signed-in viewers aged 13 years or older with search history enabled." The Help pages add two requirements that the post does not mention: viewers must "Turn on your YouTube watch and search history" and "Set your YouTube device language to English."

Watch history carries more weight than the post suggests. According to the mobile Help page, "Feeds and the top bar are not visible if your YouTube watch history is paused or turned off." A viewer who has disabled watch history - one of the controls YouTube described in a March 2026 FAQ on shaping recommendations - therefore loses not only custom feeds but the whole redesigned top bar.

Devices are also uneven. The post says the rollout covers "mobile and desktop," while the computer Help page states: "Custom feeds are currently not available on tablets." One commenter under the announcement asked whether the update applies to the tablet app; the post itself does not answer.

The 13-and-older floor matches the one YouTube set for Ask YouTube, its conversational search tool, which PPC Land reported in July 2026 was limited to signed-in US viewers aged 13 or over searching in English.

How a prompt becomes a feed

On mobile, the entry point is a plus sign at the top of Home. The Community post describes the step as: "Tap '+' at the top of your Home feed and describe the topic, channels, or vibe you're looking for." Its example prompt, repeated on the computer Help page, is "help me unwind after work with guided meditations under 10 minutes," a request that combines a mood, a format and a length limit in one sentence. The computer Help page offers "Morning yoga" as a shorter example.

On a computer, the sequence differs slightly. According to the Help page, a viewer signs in, goes to the Home tab, selects "Custom feed" at the top left of the screen, enters a prompt or picks "one of the suggested prompt buttons," and presses Enter. YouTube describes the result as "dedicated spaces for specific topics that remain anchored to your Home screen."

Feeds created on a phone follow the account. "Feeds you create on mobile will sync to your desktop experience as long as you're signed into the same Google account," the Community post states.

Editing, refreshing and expiry

Each feed can be rewritten in place. A viewer selects an existing custom feed, clicks the text box at its top and enters a new prompt. "To change the 'vibe' of one of your feeds, you can update your prompt at any time," the computer Help page says.

Refreshing a custom feed does not freeze its contents. "When you refresh one of your custom feeds, YouTube generates new recommendations based on your prompt. Some videos may stay the same, while others will change. This process is similar to refreshing your standard Home feed," according to the FAQ.

Unused feeds disappear. "Custom feed prompts expire after 30 days of inactivity," both Help pages state, after which "that custom feed will no longer be available" and a new prompt is needed. Neither page defines what counts as activity.

Prompts are also moderated. "Prompts must follow our YouTube Community Guidelines. Certain prompts may not be allowed if they violate these policies," the computer Help page says, without listing examples of refused prompts.

Feedback runs through a thumbs-up and thumbs-down icon under each prompt. YouTube asks viewers to use it "If the custom feed does not accurately interpret your request," an acknowledgement that the system translating free text into a set of videos can misread what was asked.

Privacy and the main feed

Custom feeds are not social objects. "Custom feeds are private to your account. Other viewers cannot find or access the specific feeds you create," according to the mobile Help page FAQ.

They are not sealed off from the rest of the account either. "Videos you watch from a custom feed are added to your standard watch history. These watches may influence your main Home recommendations," the same FAQ says. A prompt-built meditation feed can therefore shape what the regular Home feed shows next, even after the custom feed itself has expired.

The new top bar

The second half of the announcement concerns navigation on the mobile app. "We're kicking off a series of updates to shape a more seamless Home experience, starting with a redesigned top bar featuring dedicated feeds and personalized features to give you more direct access to what you love," the post says.

According to the mobile Help page, the top bar now holds these feeds:

  • Custom feeds, added with the plus sign and kept on the bar once created.
  • Home, the standard recommendations feed covering "videos, posts, Shorts, and more."
  • Subs, formerly Subscriptions, which shows "the newest content from the channels you're subscribed to" with a row of subscribed channels at the top.
  • Movies & TV, which gathers Primetime Channel subscriptions, YouTube TV add-ons, rentals and purchases, plus film and TV recommendations.
  • Music, for recommended music videos and related content.
  • Live, for recommended live streams and those from subscribed channels.
  • More, a menu leading to destination pages for Movies & TV, Gaming, Podcasts, Playables and Memberships.

Movies & TV is conditional. "The Movies & TV feed only appears in the top bar for viewers who have active Primetime Channel subscriptions or YouTube TV add-ons," the Help page states; for everyone else it sits in the More menu. The Community post words this more bluntly: without such subscriptions, "the Movies & TV feed won't appear in the app." The Help page, which places it in More, is the more precise of the two.

Moving Subs onto the Home tab is a structural change for creators who rely on subscriber notifications and the subscriptions view for early views. The post frames the move as "keeping your favorite creators front-and-center." It does not say where, if anywhere, the old Subscriptions entry in the bottom navigation goes.

Unlike custom feeds, the top bar redesign is not described with a country or language restriction in the post. Reactions under the announcement suggest it is reaching viewers outside the US. One commenter wrote that on an Android app in the UK the only plus sign visible was the one for uploading videos, adding: "I used the category buttons all the time, and now they are gone!" That commenter also questioned whether a Premium subscription was still worth paying for. YouTube had not replied to the comment in the thread. The post had 255 reactions and 17 replies, most of them brief thanks.

What it means for creators and advertisers

For anyone paid by YouTube views, the key passage is a single FAQ answer on the computer Help page: "This feature behaves like the Home feed. If a viewer discovers and watches a video through their custom feed, it contributes to the creator's watch time and monetisation as usual." The page continues: "We are continuing to closely monitor the feature's impact on views, watch time and revenue."

That is the same commitment YouTube made during the May test, unchanged after five months. It gives creators no figures on how many viewers built a custom feed during the experiment or how traffic from those feeds compared with the standard Home feed. Nor does the Help page say whether custom feeds appear as a separate traffic source in YouTube Analytics or are folded into browse features. Without that, channels cannot tell whether a prompt-driven feed is sending them viewers or routing viewers elsewhere.

The question matters because the Home feed has already shifted under creators once. PPC Land reported in December 2025 on data from retention director Mario Joos showing Home rows had gone from six long-form recommendations to about two, with Shorts filling the space. A custom feed built on "guided meditations under 10 minutes" sets a length condition in plain language, which hands viewers a direct way to include or exclude formats that the main recommender system previously decided for them.

For advertisers, the documents are silent on ads. Neither Help page nor the post says whether ads appear inside custom feeds in the same positions as on standard Home, whether advertisers can target or exclude them, or whether prompt text informs ad selection. The statement that custom feeds behave "like the Home feed" for monetisation suggests ads serve as they do on Home, but YouTube does not say so explicitly. The Premium tier split also matters to media buyers: YouTube Premium members, who already watch without ads, now get more than twice as many custom feeds as viewers who see ads.

YouTube is not the only platform letting users steer a feed with typed requests. Meta in October 2026 added a "Your algorithm" tool to Facebook that takes typed topics for Feed and Reels, with large language models helping ranking respond to them. Neither company has published how long such requests persist in ad systems.

YouTube also kept the door open to more changes. "Looking ahead, we're excited to build on this and continue shaping a more seamless Home experience - stay tuned for updates!" the post says, adding that the company is "actively working on bringing custom feeds to more users and regions in the future." No dates are given for either.

Timeline

Summary

Who: YouTube, through a TeamYouTube post in the YouTube Help Community and two updated Help Center pages, affecting signed-in US viewers aged 13 and over, YouTube Premium members, creators and advertisers.

What: Custom feeds built from text prompts are rolling out on mobile and desktop, with up to three active feeds per account, or eight for Premium members, a 30-day inactivity expiry, and watches that count toward creator watch time and monetisation. The mobile app's Home top bar is redesigned with Subs, Live, Music and, for viewers with Primetime Channels or YouTube TV add-ons, Movies & TV feeds.

When: The announcement was posted on October 22, 2026, and says custom feeds start rolling out from that day. The feature was first tested with one feed per account in May 2026.

Where: Custom feeds are limited to the United States and English, and are not available on tablets. The post sets no geographic limit for the top bar redesign, and viewers outside the US report seeing it.

Why: YouTube says it wants to make it easier for viewers to reach the formats and topics they want from Home. For creators and advertisers, the change moves part of Home discovery from inferred behaviour to written prompts, while YouTube says it is still monitoring the effect on views, watch time and revenue.