Magento – Magento 2. How to add recently viewed products programmatically

I guess it depends on what your trying to add and if it needs to be at a particular point e.g before or after the add to cart button.

If after the addtocart button is ok you can use product.info.addtocart since it calls <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('', true, true) ?>.

e.g

<catalog_product_view>
    <reference name="product.info.addtocart">
        <block type="core/text" name="core-text"><action method="setText"><text><![CDATA[<div>Test</div>]]></text></action></block>
    </reference>
</catalog_product_view>

Update: If you wrap the text in a div as I have updated above it will work in the default theme like below. But this may not work quite right in other themes like the new rwd.

You could try this solution from: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15682483/how-to-get-recently-view-product-for-guest-user-in-magento

Override: class Mage_Reports_Block_Product_Viewed

Add this function:

   protected function _toHtml() {

/*   if ($this->_hasViewedProductsBefore() === false) {
    return '';
} */

$this->setDisplayMinimalPrice('1');
$collection = $this->_getRecentProductsCollection();

$hasProducts = (bool)count($collection);
//        if (is_null($this->_hasViewedProductsBefore())) {
//           Mage::getSingleton('reports/session')->setData('viewed_products', $hasProducts);
//        }
if ($hasProducts) {
    $this->setRecentlyViewedProducts($collection);
}

return parent::_toHtml();
}