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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

You’re wrong here because yes you can play music through a group, but you cannot select the music on your phone. It will play random stuff from your library or linked music streaming service, or play something requested verbally (glitchy), but for example if I am

listening to an album or playlist in Apple Music on my phone, it will not CAST that music from a device to it. Hope that helps you better understand what people are trying to say the issue is here.

aljmllr
Community Member

You do understand not everyone is using it for music? I was trying to use it for Audible, for example, and the option is gone to cast my audio meaning non-Google apps cannot share audio to a full group. 

Thanks Ghostprint, I thought I'd fallen off my perch. I used to listen to Online webcasts, audiobooks which worked great by tapping the 'Cast my audio' that was under each individual speaker and each group. Now all I can do is tap 'Play music.' the simply defaults to whatever Music service I've linked in the music settings. Basically it rubbish now. 

Regards turning volume up or down can still be done by say for example I'm on my Android phone playing music to all my home speakers (a group) just use the phones up/down buttons and it adjusts all equally. 

Unless Amazon/Audible come up with a cast icon (Never going to happen) We're basically up the smelly river without paddles. 

What's Google playing at? 

 

Companies like Google and Facebook have become SOOOOO big, that they feel they don't have to respond to support requests and user groups.  And they don't have to offer any explanation. 

Sooner or later It'll come around to bite them.

I've been having the same issue since the Sonos litigation and have been waiting patiently for a fix but am now have some serious doubts... Hopefully this get resolved otherwise my setup is useless to me since I often listen to Audiobooks from "incompatible" services.

I have exactly the same issue and remade my group 1000 times and it persist. Thanks for posting this. WTF google

I have the same issue from my NEW Samsung phone (but not my old Samsung phone).  Seems I wasted money investing in Google speakers.  😡

xkcdtank
Community Member

The use case is casting PHONE AUDIO (whatever that audio might be. could be a website, a video, an app, an audiobook, a game, audio file,  whatever) to a SPEAKER GROUP.  Not "playing music".  Speakers are used for far more than just music, gotham.  Get it together.  This isn't that hard to understand. 

 

The OP main point is: "I lost the ability to cast my phones AUDIO to my speaker group in the Google home app."  The type of media is irrelevant as is "use case" since the issue was/is the function to cast to speaker groups is missing, which isn't true. 

We're free to cast whatever we like to speaker groups provided the underlying content/apps support the feature. In order to cast it needs to be started someplace else and then a destination is chosen (speaker group). Casting from an individual speaker from within the Home app begins the mirror process in the Home app when using a handheld device.

Have you stopped for just one second to realize that the issue you are complaining about is or may be totally different than the issue the original poster's query relates to in this instance? 

The OP is looking to and suggests that they used to be able to and expect to begin the casting process from WITHIN the Home App by choosing a set of grouped speakers in the HOME APP and playing audio from his phone by pressing a "cast" button when choosing a grouped speaker listing IN the Home app. And when they press the group speakers to do that they are taken to the setup options for grouped speakers instead of a CAST button. The reason for explaining mirroring? Mirroring happens when started from within the Home app from individual speakers and there is no equivalent "cast" button when speakers are grouped in the Home app. Try it and see for yourself; if that's not the process you're using to cast whatever it is you want to listen to on an individual or grouped speaker, then it's not the same issue as the OP.

I and others who have reviewed this thread haven't misunderstood or avoided understanding the initial question -- it was explained that what was claimed never worked that way -- been using and supporting this stuff for more than five years and not once have I seen that option. I also don't just respond, I look for support articles and help center articles and confer, when necessary, with others.

Now, the issue for the loss of casting you so vociferously claim is being deliberately avoided is separate from what was asked. What's being done -- instead of creating a new thread that details that specific issue, this thread has been hijacked by "sounds similar" issues by you and others that simply don't relate to the original question asked, explained, understood, and answered. Maybe it's the mere reading of the subject line that is the cause for that.

I don't think I'm the one lacking understanding -- I'm answering the original question asked, instead of the question you demand an answer for in someone else's post and thread. The conflation of one issue with another sounds like a more plausible explanation, otherwise, it's simply preposterous.

lukus
Community Member

I'm afraid your flowery prose cannot disguise the fact that it's you who is lacking understanding here.

Continung insistence to the contrary, simply brings your similarity to King Canute to the fore.

 

You are simply wrong, it clearly did for years...  And now dosent... This strikes me like there could be an 3rd party app fix. Route the device audio through an ap, like those graphic eq apps do, then cast that to a group. 

GothamNY your posts are taking this way off topic. This thread should be about trying to resolve the issue but it has turned into you reaching very hard to hold on to your point, when clearly everyone else on here knows what they're talking about. Sometimes you just gotta say "oooh I get it now" and/or delete your posts. 

Your comments are very unhelpful, rude, condescending, and wrong.

No the issue is casting the phones audio! Any audio wether it be YouTube or Deezer or whatever. Again the issue is ability to cast from the phone! And it is no longer available? Make sense?

@GothamNY, please acknowledge you understand that "mirror my device to speaker groups" is a feature Android devices had before the 1/6/22 downgrade, but iOS devices have never had.

The fact the OP said "phone's audio" is entirely the point actually. Casting directly from media apps like YT still works just fine, but that's not the 'phone's audio' at that point, it's an app taking over. In order to cast the phone's actual audio, i.e. all of the phone's sounds and anything played on it requires the Cast Audio tab to be there, which it is not there in a Group anymore. Get it now?

Bro, the problem is that there is NO WAY to cast the phone's audio to a device group. Yes, we know we can cast OTHER THINGS to it using third party apps. But we CANNOT cast the phone's audio to any device group, and that feature has been REMOVED from Google Home. It was the main feature i used on the speakers, we all feel very scammed.

There're already workaround solutions in this post, worked for me (Samsung galaxy). Maybe try them 

@MrOscarvs , good news. The latest update of the Google Home app (roughly 1 week) finally addresses the problem, at least for Samsung Galaxy (Android) devices. In the Home app, ask the assistant to "Cast My Phone." You'll be given the option to connect to all of your speaker groups, as well as to individual speakers. Each speaker shows a % volume level, and you can adjust them individually. The master volume is controlled by your phone's up/down buttons. Then, from your home screen, choose your music streaming service, Amazon Audible or your MP3 music player, (for example). 

Note that the option to "Cast My Phone" to speaker groups was never available on iOS devices, and I'm not certain that it is in the new release (iOS users, please weigh in). This has been a source of frustration and confusion in this thread, as even some Google reps have been unaware of the feature's existence. It is assumed they have iOS devices and never knew of the option we Android users have depended on for our multi-room audio experience.

eArmin
Community Member

As @xkcdtank explained we can not cast phone's audio to the speakers group after that Sonos issue. I can't cast my audible or website audio to the speakers group. Only a very few apps that have built-in cast option can cast on the group. It doesn't related to the Sonos patent and we expect Google reenable this missing option again in near future updates. I mainly use speakers group to losten to my audibles while working.

Lieflotje
Community Member

I get sooo frustrated by reading these comments! 🤬

I have had the EXACT SAME problem for several weeks and it is driving me insane!

One of the biggest reasons I bought so many Google speakers is so I can cast to all speakers at once.

The responses of @GothamNY are ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING OMFG.

YOU ARE NOT LISTENING TO WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING!

 

I myself used the "cast my audio" option for my speaker groups, in the Home app, to cast my YouTube audio.

NOT my YouTube Music audio and NOT audio to listen to music.

I follow several murder/mistery accounts on YouTube and I use their videos like podcasts, so I cast the audio of their video to all speakers and then I can listen to the videos throughout my entire house while I am cleaning or doing chores or something.

Since a couple of weeks this option is gone and I have still found no solution.

I am really getting fed up and Google Support has been absolutely useless regarding this issue.

 

Sorry if I am a bit rude, but this was part of my every day routine and I am Autistic, so I can not describe in words how much stress and unease this is causing, because I just cannot find a solution and I spent a lot of money on speakers that I now am unable to use in the way I want to and bought them for...

 

PLEASE GOOGLE, FIX THIS ISSUE.

I totally get where you come from with listening to things around the house while you get things done. I have debilitating arthritis and being able to cast audio to all the speaker groups around my house was a plus. I must say, after a telephone call from Google support two days ago I notice that cast my audio is back for individual speakers but not groups. I left a review on play store of one star and the following morning woke up to a reply from the developer. That had, a link to some q&a examples to fault diagnosis & contact details. I went to the letter and you get asked a few questions I think I kept doing other and other again and it came up with contact with email ir phone call. I chose call and entered my number. Had a call back moments later and whoever that was in a fault finding and as they were on loudspeaker they could actually hear the responses from my Google home device. He went away saying that definitely the firmware of the latest update is faulty and he was escalating it to the developer who will do something about it. 12 hours later I had cast my audio back on speakers but not groups. I also learnt that from your Google device say, Hey Google give feedback. It'll ask what's the feedback, you say it briefly. Those feedbacks are received by the developer. I tried some on mine and noticed it seemed solved a few hours later. (That's a separate issue I had on a new Nest device) 

What did has given me is that Google seems to listen in my country anyway I'm hoping that be the same for you too. Best of lucky and happy hunting. 

 

Completely agree with all of your sentiment. 

c4sper877
Community Member

@GothamNY - Dude, why are you so intentionally avoiding the fact that EVERYONE, including OP, is saying that the individual speaker group screen that google removed also contained the "cast my audio" button?!??

That feature no longer exists!

It's great that it doesn't affect YOUR individual use case. But there are a lot of people out there that this does affect!

The "cast audio" button effectively plugged a speaker group into your phone's headphone jack (figuratively speaking of course) -  this allowed people to stream whatever audio is coming from their phone, whether it be from YouTube, Spotify, a phone call, or some other app that doesn't have casting options.

A lot of people, myself included, have spent a lot of money on Google audio hardware setups simply based on this feature alone - being able to cast any audio from your phone to any select speaker group.

If you're going to ignore what people are clearly saying, then you are going to struggle to contribute anything of value to the conversation.

 

I really hope Google fixes this soon because it's completely destroyed my use case 😭

Completely agree with all of your sentiment.

tommykat1
Community Member

This is my issue also!  My Chromecast system of 15 stations and 30+ speakers has been bricked! The ability to be able to cast to speaker groups by mirroring my device was paramount to my purchase of Chromecast devices.

ghostprint
Community Member

Yes @c4sper877 we are all in agreement ( except@GothamNY  apparently...)  that, in home app, when accessing a speaker group, the screen that use to contain the volume for the whole group and the "cast my audio" button at the bottom, is missing

And yes @tommykat1 , my setup is similar to yours (although smaller) and it's also bricked. 

 

For anyone that is interested in an update tldr, or needs clarification on my original post:

The ability to cast phone audio to a speaker group is missing in Google Home app after the sonos patent debacle.

It use to work like this: open home app, tap a speaker group, (a screen would appear with volume and a "cast my audio" button), tap "cast my audio" and the sound played on the phone (irregardless of source) would sound through all the speakers in the speaker group.

 

Now, in Home app, when I (and everyone else, apparently) tap a speaker a group, the settings screen pops up without the ability or button to "cast my audio"

 

Hope it's clear...

tommykat1
Community Member

@ghostprint, amen, you nailed it.

Note I read somewhere that the missing feature of "mirroring and casting from your device" that we are lamenting may not be available on IOS (Apple) devices, only Android and Google Pixel devices. This may be why some don't know what we're talking about, because they may not know what they're missing. I use a Samsung Galaxy phone and tablet, and what I see is different than what my friends see with iPhones.  Just a thought.

STEPHany
Community Member

I have this problem on my S9+ but not on a tab10. They both used to work. Idk if an update to my S9 caused this my tab hasn't updated in a while need to make sure it doesn't I suppose. Whatever the case Google need to pull the head out of the ass and fix it. It basically ruins the entire experience! 🥺

ghostprint
Community Member

@STEPHany  i'm on Android also. Use to work. Sonos thing happened. No longer working. Simple as that. 

 

They disabled the "volume" screen on groups (to quickfix and comply with the pattent infringement, (instead of paying for royalties)). Coincidentally, that screen holds also the "cast my audio" button.  😒 (Alas, google gives 0 f***s if a feature we all payed for, is now disabled... Is like buying a car with an inline 6 and after a pattent f**k up, the manufacturer disables 2 cilinders remotely because inline 6 is an x company pattent 🤬) 

 

Disappointed...😒

lukus
Community Member

I have the same problem.

I thought I was going crazy.

For the love of all that is decent and good .. please fix this Google.

Home is beginning to feel like a dumpster littered graveyard.

Cartel2000
Community Member

I'm having the same problem and Google support told me today, this function never existed! So frustrating, spent 3 hours this morning to get a resolution and then I feel I'm going mad......

"never existed" That is hilarious (and terrible in other ways... Tech support not knowing their product or Tech support are instructed to gaslight customers, etc)

EPDB86
Community Member

I have same issue. Group speaker no longer has "cast my audio" button (use to listen to Amazon Music app via this feature). Yes individuals have the "cast my audio" option but not a speaker group. "Play Music" under group irrelevant as none of the preferences are the audio from the phone. As many have said whole reason for buying Google Home speakers is to have audio through out house. I was swearing and smashing buttons on Home app last week trying to figure it out. Glad i am not only one.

Fanva
Community Member

So, lot of posts to read.

Did anyone actually find a solution for this? I don't think flying from Denmark to the US to knock on Google's door is an option during these covid times. 

Daexulin
Community Member

This is infuriating, IMHO pretty much makes speaker groups useless. Even the "Play Music" button to play something random is almost an insult. I've also discovered trying to cast to a group from other apps fails to cast at all. 

 

The only logical explanation is that this is a quick legal fix due to the lawsuit. Don't see why they don't just put a volume gauge for each device in the group rather than a master one. Even so just remove volume control at all and let us control the input volume from the device and ignore all speaker volume. 80% of speaker group functionality is now missing.

spritle27407
Community Member

Same problem...

I'm just joining this thread in hopes there is a solution soon.