You’ll find the Google Discover feed in a few different places: it’s one swipe away from the home screen on most Android phones, it’s front and center in the Google apps for Android and iOS, and it also appears on the new tab page for Google Chrome on mobile. And yet, in my opinion, it doesn’t get nearly enough attention.
You may already be a fan of Google Discover and visit these pages daily. But according to the people I know (and that’s a pretty small portion of the world’s population), this constantly updated feed of news, reviews, and other updates is not that well-known.
The Google Discover feed shows you high-quality web articles and other information (such as sports scores) that are of specific interest to you. You can customize the feature in several ways.
How the Google Discover feed works
Discover starts with quick information.
Source: Lifehacker
Google Discover works right out of the box: you don’t need to spend time setting it up before you use it. You can find it in any of the places I mentioned above, but here I’ll focus on using it on a Pixel phone (it works similarly in the other apps): just swipe left from the main screen to open it.
As you probably know, Google knows a lot about you based on your search history and other activity in its apps, and it uses that knowledge to populate the Discover feed. Everyone’s feed is different, but you might see the weather in your location, the latest scores from your favorite sports team, and places you recently searched for on Google Maps.
If the Discover feed is working as intended, you should also see a list of recently published online articles that match your interests (in my case, tech, science, and football). You can tap on any of these articles to view them. You may also see links to Google apps and tools, such as Google Translate or Google’s service for removing your personal information from web search results.
There’s no end to the Discover feed: keep scrolling to see more recommendations for what to read. For new links, go to the top of the screen and pull down to refresh. The content you see is based on your activity across the web and apps. For a breakdown of how this is collected, visit your Google Account dashboard on the web.
How to Customize the Google Discover Feed
Tell Google what you’re not interested in.
Source: Lifehacker
If the recommended items you see in your Google Discover feed aren’t quite to your taste, you can customize them in a few ways. For example, you can tap the heart icon on items you really like, and sometimes you’ll see a row of face emojis in the grid to give you feedback on a particular recommendation.
Tap the three dots next to an article and you can tell Discover that you’re not interested in the article specifically, or the article’s topic in general. You can also block content from a specific source using the same pop-up menu. To configure your feed even further, tap the Manage your interests link on the same screen.
You’ll see some of the Google searches you’ve recently performed, as well as items you’ve saved in apps like Google Maps. Anything you’ve liked in the Discover feed by tapping the heart icon will also appear here. For all of these lists, you can quickly remove items by tapping on them if you don’t want to see relevant recommendations. You’ll also see topics you’ve said you’re not interested in, and you can edit this list as well.
Finally, you can tap on your profile picture (top right) to access a variety of options related to Discover and your Google Account in general: The most important for Discover is Interestswhich will take you to the screen mentioned earlier. You can also view (and clear) your Google search history, view your public Google profile, and more.