August 24, 2026, 5:54 am | Read time: 3 minutes
In a sweeping update, Google Search and the services provided by Google, such as Discover and News, are getting a range of new features. Users will be able to more easily set preferred websites and customize their personal feed in the Google app and Chrome via AI chat. The listening function in the News app is also receiving a practical update for more personalized topic selection.
Customize Discover Feed via AI Chat
Many people are not familiar with Google Discover, even though they likely use it several times a day. It is a personalized feed with news and interesting content that appears when opening the Google app or Chrome tabs. Until now, users had little influence over the topic selection–this is set to change.
In the future, the feed can be freely customized, as Google announced in a blog post. To do this, simply click on the three-dot menu on any Discover story and specify topics or links you want to see more of. Google does not provide a fixed selection but relies on text input similar to an AI chatbot. Users can describe in their own words what they want to see more–or less–of. Discover saves these preferences and implements them in real-time in the feed.
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The new customization option is expected to appear in the Google app in the coming days. An additional info field will also appear in the feed, where users can click to directly access the text input.
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Preferred Sources in Google Search
For some time now, websites can be set as “preferred sources” in Google Search. This allows users to ensure that trusted publications are prioritized in relevant search queries–without affecting the diversity of reporting. You can also select TECHBOOK as a preferred source.
However, this process has been somewhat cumbersome, which is why Google is now introducing a one-click solution. The company is providing a new button for publishers, which they can easily integrate into their website. This adds the respective publication directly to Google Search and brings readers back to the original site.
Preferred sources are more easily found in Google Search. However, they only appear in the headlines box, in the overview with AI, and in AI mode. The actual search results remain unaffected.
Personalized Listening Function in News
Another innovation concerns a feature that has so far been available to only a few users worldwide: At the end of 2025, Google introduced a listening function in the News app for Android. Users can have news summarized and read aloud in a podcast style. Here too, Google now allows users to set topics for the daily audio briefing themselves.
The listening function is currently available only to selected users in the Google News app for Android and requires that language and region preferences are set to English (USA).