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Chromecast turning on nightly while watching TV

DesertMike62
Community Member

I'm often up very late in the evening. I have a Chromecast (2nd gen) connected to my Samsung Smart TV (plugged into my HDMI 3 port). For some unknown reason, *every night* sometime between 2am and 3am (it's not exactly at the same time each night, but most often within that hour), I'll be watching my Samsung TV (watching regular cable TV, or possibly Netflix) and suddenly, without any actions by me, the Chromecast will automatically come on and take over my TV. It comes on showing the "ambient" setting which is set to display photos from my Google photo albums. The only way to get back to what I was watching is to grab my Samsung remote, then switch the input from HDMI 3 (my Chromecast) back to the source I was previously watching. Why is this happening (regularly, every night), and how can I stop Chromecast from suddenly turning on when I've done nothing to prompt it to turn on? I don't want to kill the ability to cast from my Android phone or Chrome web browser (so I know I don't want to permanently turn off the setting on my Samsung TV for "Anynet+ (HDMI-CED), as I've already tried turning that off and it eliminated my ability to cast to my TV).

1 Recommended Answer

rekocarreis
Community Member

The TLDR thing to just check right now is below in bold to save you time!


Im not crazy familiar with your exact TV and settings, but .. Do you by chance have Xfinity internet? I have Xfinity Comcast, and almost every single night around 2:30/3am, the internet goes off for a few minutes and then comes back on. I’ve contacted Xfinity about it a billion times and even upgraded routers until FINALLY some random comcast person told me that majority of routers will do that a few times a week real late at night/early morning, sometimes more depending, in order to sync and download updates and possibly upload data counters and error logs etc etc. So yeah, it’s basically like the few minutes that it takes to do all of its router stuff and stay alive. 

Anyway, my point is that, if your TV has a setting that allows it to be switched on/off via powering on/off a device that’s  connected to an hdmi port…OR, a similar setting that allows your TV’s input to switch when a device is powered on or plugged into an HDMI port, I would make sure that those are turned off. If you don’t know if you have those settings, try to Google it for your TV and be super sure. It’s a weird setting that is buried in most settings menus, in my experience.

What might be happening is that your router is restarting each night (bc comcast assumes everyone works 9-5 🙄) and so your Chromecast is being disconnected from the internet, causing it to then reboot (which, actually the Chromecast reboots completely too if it’s on for a really long time. Idk about ambient vs in-use but my cast has definitely restarted on me in the middle of very long Netflix binges after also being left playing all night bc I fell asleep. It’s prob for the same reason the router restarts) … lol sooo anyway, if your Chromecast is having to search for wifi or reboot, and if you have those settings on your tv and they’re turned on, that might be the cause for the horrifying Google takeovers at 3am. 

Lmk if any of this helped - good luck! Being tormented by a chromecast at 3am every night sounds awful. 

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5 REPLIES 5

rekocarreis
Community Member

The TLDR thing to just check right now is below in bold to save you time!


Im not crazy familiar with your exact TV and settings, but .. Do you by chance have Xfinity internet? I have Xfinity Comcast, and almost every single night around 2:30/3am, the internet goes off for a few minutes and then comes back on. I’ve contacted Xfinity about it a billion times and even upgraded routers until FINALLY some random comcast person told me that majority of routers will do that a few times a week real late at night/early morning, sometimes more depending, in order to sync and download updates and possibly upload data counters and error logs etc etc. So yeah, it’s basically like the few minutes that it takes to do all of its router stuff and stay alive. 

Anyway, my point is that, if your TV has a setting that allows it to be switched on/off via powering on/off a device that’s  connected to an hdmi port…OR, a similar setting that allows your TV’s input to switch when a device is powered on or plugged into an HDMI port, I would make sure that those are turned off. If you don’t know if you have those settings, try to Google it for your TV and be super sure. It’s a weird setting that is buried in most settings menus, in my experience.

What might be happening is that your router is restarting each night (bc comcast assumes everyone works 9-5 🙄) and so your Chromecast is being disconnected from the internet, causing it to then reboot (which, actually the Chromecast reboots completely too if it’s on for a really long time. Idk about ambient vs in-use but my cast has definitely restarted on me in the middle of very long Netflix binges after also being left playing all night bc I fell asleep. It’s prob for the same reason the router restarts) … lol sooo anyway, if your Chromecast is having to search for wifi or reboot, and if you have those settings on your tv and they’re turned on, that might be the cause for the horrifying Google takeovers at 3am. 

Lmk if any of this helped - good luck! Being tormented by a chromecast at 3am every night sounds awful. 

Thanks! I think you might be on to something here. Unfortunately, I just scanned my TV's owner's manual, and it is waaaaaaay higher tech than I am, so to resolve this nightly problem, I have just unplugged the **bleep** thing and will only plug in the Chromecast when I actually need to use it (which is rare). Thanks for your help though! I really do think the solution lies somewhere in what you wrote and in my waaaaay too high tech owner's manual.

Jeran
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,

Did you have any more questions or need any additional help? 

Thank you,
Jeran
 

Nope. I surrender.

Jeran
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

No problem at all. If you run into any more issue, or have any more questions, feel free to create a new thread. I'll go ahead and lock up this one for now.

 

Thank you for your help on this, rekocarreis!

 

Best regards,

Jeran