You can find the Google Discover feed in a number of 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’s shown on the new tab page for Google Chrome on mobile as well. And yet it doesn’t, in my opinion, get enough attention.
Perhaps you’re already a Google Discover devotee, and rely on these pages daily, but based on the people I know—which is admittedly quite a small slice of the global population—this constantly updated feed of news, reviews, and other updates isn’t all that widely known about.
The Google Discover feed surfaces high-quality web articles and other information (such as sports scores) that’s specifically of value to you—you can customize the feature in a variety of ways.
How the Google Discover feed works
Credit: Lifehacker
Google Discover works right out of the box—you don’t need to spend time configuring it before using it. You can find it in any of the places I’ve mentioned above, but here I’ll focus on using it on a Pixel phone (it works in a similar way across the other apps)—just swipe left from the main home screen to bring it up.
As you’re no doubt aware by now, Google knows a lot about you based on your search history and other activity inside its apps, and this knowledge is used 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 on Google Maps that you’ve been looking up recently.
If the Discover feed is working as intended, you should also see a list of recently published online articles that match up with your interests (tech, science, and soccer in my case)—you can tap on any of these articles to view them. You might 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 on scrolling down to see more recommendations for what to read. If you want some new links, head to the top of the screen, and pull down to refresh. The content you see is based on your activity on the web and inside apps, and if you want an overview of how this is being collected, head to your Google Account dashboard on the web.
How to customize the Google Discover feed
Credit: Lifehacker
If the recommended articles you’re seeing in the Google Discover feed aren’t quite to your tastes, you can tweak them in a variety of ways. You can tap the heart icon on articles you really like, for example, and you’ll sometimes see a row of face emojis in the grid for giving feedback on a particular recommendation.
Tap the three dots next to any article, and you can tell Discover you’re not interested in the article specifically, or in the article topic more generally. The same pop-up menu also lets you block content from a certain source. To configure your feed even further, tap on the Manage your interests link on the same screen.
You’ll see some of the Google searches you’ve run recently, as well as items you’ve saved in apps such as Google Maps. Anything that you’ve liked in the Discover feed by tapping its heart icon shows up here as well. For all of these lists, you can quickly remove entries just 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 your profile picture (top right) to access a host of options related to Discover and your Google account in general: The key one for Discover is Interests, which takes you to the screen we’ve already mentioned, but you’re also able to view (and wipe) your Google search history, see your public Google profile, and more.