Google Discover update adds a highly requested feature to personalize your feed

Google Discover feed
(Image credit: Jay Bonggolto / Android Central)

What you need to know

  • Google Discover has picked up a nifty update that lets you block specific YouTubers.
  • The latest change makes it easier to hide videos from a particular channel rather than completely blocking YouTube videos.

Google's Discover feed has been a useful destination for people looking for the latest news and interesting content, including videos, but some YouTube video recommendations may not be to your liking on occasion. This is where a new Google app feature comes in handy.

As spotted by SamMobile, the Google app's Discover feed now includes the option to hide videos from certain YouTube channels you're hardly interested in. According to the outlet, the ability to turn off recommendations from specific content creators was among the app's highly requested features.

Previously, you could either tolerate seeing irrelevant video recommendations on your Discover feed or completely block YouTube videos. The new update prevents you from having to make an all-or-nothing choice. 

Forcing you to disable YouTube recommendations simply because you didn't like a particular video doesn't seem to make sense, and Google has obviously realized this. Google Discover already allows you to hide content from websites you don't want to see, so the lack of a similar option for YouTube videos was, to put it mildly, perplexing.

More importantly, the new capability makes it easier to personalize content that passes through your feed. While the majority of the articles and videos that appear in this stream are based on your search history, Google can be a little too broad in its suggestions at times.

It's worth noting that the ability to block videos from YouTube entirely remains in place, if you opt for a video-free Discover feed, which may soon make its way to Google's desktop homepage.

We're seeing the latest change in Google beta version 13.36.10.26, which appears to be widely available right now.

Jay Bonggolto
News Writer & Reviewer

Jay Bonggolto always keeps a nose for news. He has been writing about consumer tech and apps for as long as he can remember, and he has used a variety of Android phones since falling in love with Jelly Bean. Send him a direct message via Twitter or LinkedIn.