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"cast my audio" to speaker group option missing - goes directly to speaker group settings

ghostprint
Community Member

About a week ago I lost the ability to cast my phones audio to my speaker group in the Google home app. Casting to a single speaker works fine but when I tap a group, it goes directly to group settings.

 

I understand that after the loss of the sonos patent lawsuit, google chosed to remove the ability to adjust speaker group volume (instead of paying for the patent royalties and providing it's customers a feature they played for, (but that's a different discussion all together)) As I understand, group volume has nothing to do with casting to a group 😒 

 

I presume this is a quick fix like "just remove that volume adjust screen for speaker groups from the app until we fix it properly". Screen, which incidentally also contains the "cast my audio" buton...

 

I personally couldn't care less about group volume adjustment (I do it manually, for each one), but casting my phone audio is the main reason I bought a bunch of nest speakers. This feature is (for the time being) still working from chrome browser on my pc.

 

Yes, I know how to cast audio from specific apps that support audio casting. This is not about that...

 

The (horrible) workaround I found is to remote to my pc from my phone and cast audio from there using the chrome browser 😒 (but this is asinine)

 

Is there a way to get casting to speaker groups for my phone back?

 

 

 

205 REPLIES 205

I agree 100%, @ghostprint.  However, they apparently can't fix it without infringing on the Sonos patents as determined by the ITC, and they stubbornly refuse to pay a fair licensing fee to use the intellectual property protected by them. Instead, they cripple their products and leave their customers to suffer the consequences. I really don't understand how this is good business from any standpoint except bullying and greed

You can no longer download the old APK They killed the link

Nobody "killed" anything. You can still download it here:

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-home/google-home-2-46-1-7-release/

And just who are "they" anyway?

#PAYSONOS

DannyOcean
Community Member

Screenshot_20220324-073157_Google.jpg

The work around solution provided by @rlowry00 works for me without having to install a previous home app version..

Opening Google assistant on the phone (you can long press the phone screen's home button to do this) and saying "Cast my phone", then choosing "Cast settings" 

tommykat1
Community Member

@DannyOcean, this solution doesn't work on my Samsung Galaxy phone, and I fear that it still wouldn't "Mirror My Device" even if I could get it to respond as you show.  Yikes!

tommykat1
Community Member

I'd like to circle back to the discussion about casting from a device to speaker groups using the function called "mirroring." There has been much confusion in the Google community on this issue. Some members and mods insist the function never existed, but those of us who relied on the feature know that Google's "update" on January 6th removed the heart of our full-home audio experience. Many (including me) report that live-human Google support reps state they weren't aware of the function or of its removal, but would "report it."

To repeat an old cliche, "Stop! You're both right!"

with a simple Google search, it became clear that "mirroring from your device" has never been available on iOS devices without a software plug-in from the app store, with a cost. Also, the function only mirrors your device to a single speaker, not to a full speaker group. Thus, community members using iOS, including (I assume) Google reps who offer their strong opinions negating the function of "casting to speaker groups by mirroring your device," have no point-of-reference to an important function that Android users relied on for many years and lost in the infamous update.

How important is this feature? As a Samsung Galaxy user, I can say that, with 15 Chromecast/Nest rooms encompassing 30+ speakers, it is paramount to the complete experience of my home audio arrangement. In fact, without it, my entire system is "bricked," unless I wish to "mirror" to a single speaker in one room at a time. Ironically, this is the outdated solution we used with Bluetooth for years, and is the very reason we switched to Google Home: to be able to cast to multiple speakers throughout our living environment utilizing wi-fi.

Examples of issues: my streaming app is Amazon Music. Since Amazon and Google get along about as well as Apple and Microsoft, Amazon Music is not supported as a streaming service for direct casting from the Google Home app (the "Play Music" function). By installing the Amazon Music app on my Samsung phone, I could "mirror my device" and cast to my speaker group of choice. Similarly, as a fan of Amazon's Audible, the book app is installed on my phone. Before the January 6th Google Home "update," I could cast my audio book to any speaker group and listen throughout my house.

Below are detailed screen shots of the before-and-after experience of the now crippled Google Home app. Assuming an even distribution of Android, Pixel and iOS users, one group acknowledges the seriously ridiculous loss of functionality, and the others may shrug that they never were able to do this, so they don't care. Those users have gone down a different path over the years in their choices to stream music, books, podcasts, etc., so they've found their own way to obtain a good audio experience. Suffice to say, the loss of the mirroring functionality is HUGE for the Android crowd.

Note this debacle is in addition to the loss of the volume control function that is the basis for the lawsuit, but is secondary to the plight of Android users who depend upon mirroring, because now we can't even get to the first step prior to the need of a volume control!

In addition to community members, this post is directed to Google Nest team experts who have been kind enough to respond to the confusing issue: @GoogleNestTeam, @GothamNY, @Stefanie, @GarrettDS and @KiiFromGoogle. Thank you for listening.

 

Mirroring 1.jpgMirroring 2.jpgMirroring 3.jpgMirroring 4.jpgMirroring 5.jpgMirroring 6.jpgMirroring 7.jpgMirroring 8.jpg

I found that the recommendation by rlowry00 to use the google assistant by telling it to "CAST MY PHONE" and selecting "CAST SETTINGS" will allow you to cast to a speaker group still from your phone. Not as good of an interface as the old Home app was, but a decent option to be able to play to your home speaker groups. 

Glad it works for you. For me, however, the effort simply takes me to the "Group Settings" screen which, as mentioned is worthless. 

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but did you try to open google assistant on your phone & tell it to cast your phone?  On my phone this did not open the home app. Sorry if this doesn't work for you. I tried it on my Samsung S22 and it did work as lowry00 said.

Jflrc
Community Member

Yes, that does appear to work.  You can't speak a command to your speakers that you want to cast your phone to the group but if I long press the home "button" (virtual) on the bottom of screen to open Google assistant, then say cast my phone, "cast settings" come up and I can choose to cast to my speaker group!  Thanks so much for this workaround.  It's certainly not intuitive like the earlier version but it does work.  (I have a galaxy 21+)  Thanks again!

Jflrc
Community Member

That's it!

Lisas
Community Member

@tommykat1 this is such a great post to describe the issue and SO CLEAR! I hope those that are vehemently denying this has ever been a thing can understand the issue now! 

RAA_MotR
Community Member

Heres a screen record video on YouTube of how to cast phone audio to Google Home speaker groups using your google assistant. 

 

How to cast phone audio to speaker groups using Google Assistant.  

tommykat1
Community Member

Well I'll be danged! I waited till this AM after Google updated my phone overnight, and the functionality is there to cast by mirroring, as described. Thank you all for sharing.

The volume control on my phone works for the entire speaker group, but you still have to manually adjust each individual speaker to change the balance. Clunky for sure, but it's a start.

The big question is, why hasn't a Google moderator spoken up about the update? It's certainly not intuitive.

HBZ
Community Member

Hey @tommykat1  you mean you're running a new, updated version of Home and it's all working now?

 

Do we also have the "cast" button back in Groups?

 

Can I turn on auto updates again?

tommykat1
Community Member

@HBZ , I'd say it's a big "No." It's still a buggy workaround. I lost the casting after about ten minutes, although it happens occasionally with the old app, also. There is only the single volume control on your phone. The "cast" button in groups has not been returned. I have reinstalled the old app, which gets updated nightly to the new app no matter what settings I choose for turning off auto-updates.

It appears Google is trying to get around the patent infringement by the use of voice commands rather than phone buttons and sliders. At last check, Sonos doesn't have a voice app, so perhaps the wizards at Google are going in that direction.

It's a pity that they won't keep us informed, and are using us as Beta testers to hunt and peck our way through their sporadic updates while we suffer through limited use of our systems. The first HUGE change in this direction is the need to use the Assistant and say, "Cast my phone." I gave up on this approach last month when the female voice kept saying, "I can't do that yet." Now it works. BTW, I checked the internet on this matter with a Google search (oh the irony) and there are no updated instructions as of this morning. It appears we have to come to this resourceful site to get helpful news from the global community.

lukus
Community Member

Does Google actually care about users?

I haven't seen a reply that addresses the concerns of the majority of users who are having difficulty with this issue.

Jneo
Community Member

Hi everyone, at first I was thinking am facing the same issues but its just a matter of settings. Tap on any of the configured speaker, tap the settings icon, create speaker pair and choose all the speakers. Worked for me and now I can cast audio to a 'pair'. Creating speaker group doesn't work for me as well as it brings me to the settings. Hope this works for the rest!!

SamInPgh
Community Member

No.

Jaysquared
Community Member

After waiting months for Google to fix this issue I finally found a workaround. Under phone settings select connected devices>connection preferences>cast. You will see a list of your devices and speaker groups and you will be able to successfully cast your audio. I have tested this functionality with audible and can confirm it works on Android 12. I hope this helps everyone as this issue has been extremely irritating.

hmmessman
Community Member

I have found another work around. On my Samsung S9+, open the Smart View app and I am able to select a specific speaker or speaker group. The connection works well, volume control is not the best.

jeaves726
Community Member

 Still having these same issues.  Any updates from google?  Casting my phone's audio (not just playing music) is still gone and changing the volume for a group is not longer an option.  It just loads the settings page when I tap on the group.  Using a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Have you tried the solution provided in this discussion?

Basically long pressing your phone's home button to summon the Google assistant, verbally telling it to "Cast my phone" and selecting "Cast settings" 

This works, but going into the Google Home App yields an additional helpful screen.

Enter the Home App, click on the assistant, and say "Cast my phone,"  then select "Cast Settings" (as you describe). This takes you to the page where you can choose any speaker group, or an individual speaker. After you're connected to a group, you'll have the ability to control volume of individual speakers by clicking on any speaker from within the Home App.  Group volume is controlled by your phone's volume buttons.

This isn't quite as straightforward as the software version prior to 1/6/22, but it works and I'm okay with it. In fact, the individual volume controls using percentages is better than the slider bars in the earlier version, IMO.

Hmmm, remarkably, that does work eventually. But it's a bit clunky, no? Plus if you're already playing audio on your phone, Assistant picks that up.... 

I think what's ironic is mirror-casting by voice command in lieu of clicking a button within the Home app beats the patent violation, as do the individual volume controls by speaker %. The only thing we've lost is the in-app master volume control, but the device's physical volume buttons take care of this function.

Essentially, the system works again (for Android devices, anyway), and now that I'm used to it, I'm okay with it, other than the necessity for a voice command in lieu of, or in addition to, a button labeled "Cast My Phone."

I can do the cast by voice and I'm ok with that, but when I'm casting to a group, having to go into 8 different devices to adjust individual volumes seems pretty ridiculous. I really miss the master volume (even though it had it's issues). If it was easier to get to each device, that might be different. Maybe I should take them out of each individual room and make a speaker room to make it easier to navigate between speaker volumes. 

LaraCroft
Community Member

All I get when I do that is Google search results about casting.

You should get this screen. Then just press the "Cast settings" button.

Screenshot_2022-05-20-10-58-43.jpg

Yes, setting aside that I had to say it three times as Google doesn't understand my accent; that eventually worked

Just found out that you could also tell the assistant "Cast settings", and it will open the speakers screen directly, bypassing the first step.

 

Aditionally, you could open the keyboard instead of speaking to the microphone and type in "Cast settings" directly, when you don't want to verbally speak to it 

Great shortcut, thanks @DannyOcean .

I also just noticed that if I "long click" the home button, the Google Assistant pops up, and there is already a "Cast My Phone" choice to click on, likely because it remembers that I perform this action routinely. Thus, I don't need to say anything to the assistant to accomplish what I used to do. I only have to hear her saying, "If you have a Chromecast, you can... (etc.)" before I click on "Cast Settings," and choose my group.

I can live with this app, and I assume it will only get better as time goes on. Let's hope...

My biggest beef with Google is that it has kept users in the dark since the January 6th surprise removal of core functionality, with a promise to "support users" but with no useful updates while our products were bricked for four months.

choward2323
Community Member

Same.. I used this feature on the daily.

AJT5
Community Member

I've been using the long press>cast settings for the past few weeks, but now it is failing to cast to a speaker group. The group shows up but then when I hit it and then "begin now", it fails.  I can resolve it by restarting my phone, but that is a major pain ( relatively speaking). Anyone else begin having this issue, and/or found a solution?

LaraCroft
Community Member

Hmmm, in the latest development to this sorry tale, "cast settings" now gets the response "I'm sorry I don't understand".

You have to start by saying "Cast my phone", and then select "Cast settings" from the options on the bottom of the next screen.

DerekDrew
Community Member

SOLUTION: The button in question is gone but the functionality can be recovered if you get to the exact correct screen and verbally TELL "Google Assistant" "cast my phone" with your voice. Then if you click the exact correct thing, it will work as before it was broken earlier this year. Not exactly intuitive.

DannyOcean
Community Member

Currently I'm able to summon the assistant by long pressing the home button (android), and then typing in "Cast settings"  (or verbally commanding it) but I prefer to type it.

 

This takes me directly to the speakers groups and can cast as usual. 

 

However, what frightens me is the progressive loss of easiness to reach this function 😞

But it's not "cast as usual" as you mentioned. The group volume is gone. Yes it can cast to a group, but the control over the group volume no longer displays and you have to go into each individual speaker to adjust volume. 

Agreed, meant to say cast as usual, as usual as the last few months after Google decided to take the function away xD

 

As a side note, on the updated version of Home (Android) it's seems easier to control volume of individual speakers as well as groups using those bigger sliders