STAY. IN. AMBIENT. MODE.

[colemickens]

Seriously, I'm going to return this trash.

My Chromecast is sitting in Ambient Mode.

I cast Spotify.

Now it's on the GOD **bleep** HOME SCREEN for no reason, showing ADS and a mostly static screen. THIS WILL RUIN MY **bleep**ING TV.

WHAT THE **bleep** DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET THIS TO STAY IN AMBIENT MODE.

[colemickens]

See, we can do a fun little exercise here:

1. When I have Ambient Mode enabled, it's already enabled, and I cast Spotify, should Ambient Mode be replaced by a nearly useless Home screen (other than the scrolling huge banner ad, of course)?

Probably not, right?

2. So it should be easy to find somewhere where Google acknowledges this as a bug, right?

3. Or... could it possibly be that they either (a) don't care about a bug that causes ad impressions "oopsies" or (b) they intentionally return to Home in all sorts of conditions, even when Ambient Mode is enabled, ""oopsies"".

Ridiculous. I'm not going to be a **bleep**ing pin-cushion for Google's ad empire. I hope the Store team can *actually* process my refund this time.

[colemickens]

Maybe I'll write it up as "Google is hell bent on ruining your OLED to show you ads". Someone convince me otherwise.

[Byteguy]

It may actually be that Spotify needs to make a change.  Apps generally control what is displayed when they cast, not Google.

But, send Feedback to Google using these instructions:

https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6292231

And, you also might want to reach out to Spotify Support.

[colemickens]

This same problem occurs with any application that casts music. Its clear that the Chromecast is built to return to Home in all sorts of conditions. I even *waited* today for 10 minutes and it still sat on the home screen.

However, I think you're right in that there's a bug -> it doesn't even show the active playing cast in the Home, and when I "back out" to Ambient mode, it takes it a second before it realizes its playing music. That's not a Spotify bug, Spotify is clearly properly using the Chromecast APIs to provide an audio+art that is overlaid on the Ambient Mode. It's just... buggy. And knowing Google and knowing that this gets them extra ad impressions, I am not inclined to hold my breath on them fixing it.

(Again, the fact that it seems to behave inconsistently, sometimes return to home, sometimes forget what its playing, it's horribly unreliable about playing back YouTube even when I'm using the official apps and just the most basic workflow. Just another half-baked Google product.)