At Made on YouTube, Google unveiled Custom Feeds, GIF comments, DM group chats, and a fresh wave of AI features for viewers and creators alike.
Two Tracks: AI and Everything Else
The annual Made on YouTube event has just wrapped up, offering an early look at the features heading to Google's dominant online streaming platform in the coming months. As expected, AI features dominate the agenda — for both viewers and creators — but there is a handful of decidedly non-AI updates mixed in as well.
Custom Feeds: You Build the Homepage
The design of YouTube's homepage feed comes under fire often, and the platform is finally preparing to hand users more control.
With Custom Feeds, you'll be able to add new tabs to the YouTube interface filled with content of your choosing. The workflow is conversational rather than menu-driven:
- Type a description of the content you want.
- Let YouTube populate the page automatically.
- Refine your description and rate video suggestions to tune the feed.
Google says you'll be able to save «multiple» feeds, though it stopped short of specifying exactly how many. The feature will roll out soon in the US for web, mobile, and TV users.
Why It Matters
A description-driven feed builder effectively turns the recommendation algorithm into something closer to a search prompt — an approach that echoes the prompt-based interfaces now common across Google's product line. It also gives users a lever against the one-size-fits-all homepage that has drawn criticism for years.
Comments Get GIFs, DMs Get Group Chats
Interacting on YouTube will also change later this year. The platform is finally adding the ability to post GIFs in comments — apparently a long-standing and frequently repeated request from the community.
The comment box will let you search for popular animated thumbnails and post them on both regular videos and YouTube Shorts.
Meanwhile, the platform's direct messaging feature is adding support for group chat. Availability will be limited at launch:
- United States
- United Kingdom
- Singapore
- Brazil
- Some European countries
The Takeaway
Strip away the AI branding and the pattern is clear: Google is chipping away at YouTube's most persistent friction points — a feed users can't control, comments that feel limited, and messaging that stops at one-to-one. The AI layer is the headline, but the plumbing changes may be what users actually notice.