No Casting Notification on Android Devices

[Batcastle]

Normally, when casting from an Android App or Chromium-based browser, a notification pops up on any Android smartphone or tablet on the same Wi-Fi as the device that is casting. FX_Cast is not doing this.

If you could add this in it would be great, to help with controlling casting. It would also provide an easier (for the end user at least), temporary work around to Issue #50 . Otherwise, users have to have the Google Home app installed and go through that to end the casting. And even then, it only works if the device is linked somehow to your account. So doing at least this for the time being would be greatly appreciated!

This is on the latest release of the FX_Cast app and extension.

[hensm]

I would have guessed that this isn't explicitly configurable, but that the Android devices are just waiting for a change in playback status before showing a notification. Meaning there's nothing special to do to support this.

What are you casting that doesn't trigger a notification?

I haven't got an Android device to test this on, so I'm not sure how helpful I can be. I can try a VM, I suppose.

[Batcastle]

I wouldn't think they are waiting for a change in playback status. If you get rid of the notification, it comes back after some time. This leads me to conclusion that it has something to do with packets. And since I know when devices are casting, they send out a packet occasionally that keeps the network alive it would make sense if the packet that keeps the network alive also has the info shown in the notification (it shows what app or website is casting).

To answer your question, I was casting from vrv.co . It shows the notification on it's mobile app and when casting from a chromium-based browser. That notification pops up with all android apps that cast that I have tried.

[hensm]

The Chromecast advertises itself to other devices via mDNS. The playback status and current app (or status line?) are contained within a TXT record (st, rs). Waiting for a change in playback status is just waiting for an mDNS update.

In any case, if the same app is exhibiting different behaviour on Chrome than Firefox, that’s a bug, so I’ll take a look.

[Batcastle]

Oh okay. That makes sense.

I will try it with other websites too to see if the same issue is occurring elsewhere and report back later. Just to make sure it isn't just VRV doing that.

[Batcastle]

Notification does not pop up when casting either YouTube or Netflix as well.

[hensm]

Did some testing on an Android phone. Haven't been able to get cast notifications to show up under any circumstance, even for Chrome-initiated cast sessions. No luck with the VM, either. No configuration issues as far as I can tell.

I think I'm probably wrong about how Android devices pick up the playback state, since the device broadcasted device state state is identical for fx_cast and Chrome. Still doesn't really make much sense, I have no idea.

You could try with some other desktop applications with cast support (VLC, WebTorrent, etc...) and see what happens there. WebTorrent uses the same implementation (node-castv2), I think, so it would be interesting to know if that works. Also, I did find someone reporting the same problem with pychromecast.

I'll leave this issue open, and probably come back to it in the future if I can get way to test this, but nothing I can do right now.