X announced in April 2026 the launch of Grok-powered Custom Timelines, a feature that allows Premium subscribers to pin curated topic feeds to their home tab while simultaneously shutting down its Communities feature due to declining use.
The new custom feeds, which X’s head of product Nikita Bier called one of the “biggest changes” to the app to date, use AI from Grok—owned by xAI, which acquired X last year—to read and understand every post before applying topic labels. Unlike traditional feeds based on keywords or hashtags, the system personalizes content for individual users, particularly for topics they already engage with.
At launch, the feature is available only to Premium subscribers on iOS, with Android support in development. Users can pin up to 10 topics from over 75 available categories to their home tab by scrolling past their “For You” and “Following” feeds and tapping the plus sign.
The categories span broad topics including Business & Finance, Technology, Politics, and Entertainment, with specialized options for specific sports (Formula 1, cricket, esports), music genres (K-pop, hip-hop, jazz), and emerging interests like Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency. News categories prominently feature the Iran conflict, crime, and elections.
Notably, ads appear in the second position of each custom feed, suggesting X has found a way to expand its ad inventory—a significant development given the platform’s reportedly struggling ad business since Elon Musk’s acquisition.
The feature arrives alongside X’s introduction of joinable group chat links supporting up to 350 members, positioning group chats as the replacement for the discontinued Communities feature. The company also launched a “Snooze Topics” option for the main For You feed, giving users more control over their content experience.
Source: TechCrunch