Google Cast - Home Assistant

On this page

• Configuration
• Options
• Home Assistant Cast
• Playing media
  • Using the built in media player app (Default Media Receiver)
  • Casting with other apps
  • BBC iPlayer
  • BBC Sounds
  • BubbleUPNP
  • NRK Radio
  • NRK TV
  • Plex
  • Supla
  • YouTube
• Troubleshooting automatic discovery
  • Zeroconf configuration
  • Cast devices and Home Assistant on different subnets
  • Home Assistant Container

Configuration

To add the Google Cast hub to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Google Cast can be auto-discovered by Home Assistant. If an instance was found, it will be shown as Discovered. You can then set it up right away.

Manual configuration steps

If it wasn’t discovered automatically, don’t worry! You can set up a manual integration entry:

• Browse to your Home Assistant instance.

• Go to Settings > Devices & services.

• In the bottom right corner, select the Add Integration button.

• From the list, select Google Cast.

• Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

Support for mDNS discovery in your local network is mandatory for automatic discovery. Make sure that your router has this feature enabled. If mDNS does not work in your network, the IP addresses of the Cast devices can be manually entered in the configuration as mentioned below.

Options

Options for Google Cast can be set via the user interface, by taking the following steps:

• Browse to your Home Assistant instance.
• Go to Settings > Devices & services.
• If multiple instances of Google Cast are configured, choose the instance you want to configure.
• Select the integration, then select Configure.

Known hosts

A comma-separated list of hostnames or IP-addresses of cast devices, use if mDNS discovery is not working

Allowed UUIDs

A comma-separated list of UUIDs of Cast devices to add to Home Assistant. Use only if you don’t want to add all available devices. The device won’t be added until discovered through either mDNS or if it’s included in the list of known hosts. In order to find the UUID for your device use a mDNS browser or advanced users can use the following Python command (adjust friendly names as required) - python3 -c "import pychromecast; print(pychromecast.get_listed_chromecasts(friendly_names=['Living Room TV', 'Bedroom TV', 'Office Chromecast']))". This option is only visible if advanced mode is enabled in your user profile.

Ignore CEC

A comma-separated list of Chromecasts that should ignore CEC data for determining the active input. See the upstream documentation for more information. This option is only visible if advanced mode is enabled in your user profile.

Home Assistant Cast

Home Assistant has its own Cast application to show the Home Assistant UI on any Chromecast device. You can use it by adding the Cast entity row to your dashboards, or by calling the cast.show_lovelace_view action. The action takes the path of a dashboard view and an entity ID of a Cast device to show the view on. A path has to be defined in your dashboard’s YAML for each view, as outlined in the views documentation. The dashboard_path is the part of the dashboard URL that follows the defined base_url, typically “lovelace”. The following is a full configuration for a script that starts casting the downstairs tab of the lovelace-cast path (note that entity_id is specified under data and not for the action):

cast_downstairs_on_kitchen: alias: "ShowDownstairsonkitchen" sequence: - action: cast.show_lovelace_view data: dashboard_path: lovelace-cast entity_id: media_player.kitchen view_path: downstairs

Important

Home Assistant Cast requires your Home Assistant installation to be accessible via https://. If you’re using Home Assistant Cloud, you don’t need to do anything. Otherwise you must make sure that you have configured the external_url in your configuration.

Playing media

Note

Chromecasts generally don’t resolve hosts through mDNS and also ignore DNS servers from DHCP, they instead use Google’s public DNS servers, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

This means media URLs must either be specifying the IP-address of the server directly, e.g. http://192.168.1.1:8123/movie.mp4, or be publicly resolvable, e.g. http://homeassistant.internal.mydomain.com:8123/movie.mp4 where homeassistant.internal.mydomain.com resolves to 192.168.1.1 using Google’s DNS servers. A hostname which can’t be publicly resolved, e.g. http://homeassistant.local:8123/movie.mp4 will fail to play.

This is important when casting TTS or local media sources; the cast integration will cast such media from the local Home Assistant URL, which can be configured by navigating to Settings > System > Network or by configuring an internal_url.

Using the built in media player app (Default Media Receiver)

Chromecasts can play many kinds of modern media (image/audio/video) formats using the built in app Default Media Receiver. As a rule of thumb, if a Chrome browser can play a media file a Chromecast will be able to handle that too.

The media needs to be accessible via HTTP(S). Chromecast devices do not support other protocols like DLNA or playback from an SMB file share.

You can play MP3 streams like net radios, FLAC files or videos from your local network with the media_player.play_media action, as long as the media is accessible via HTTP(S). You need to set the media_content_id to the media URL and media_content_type to a matching content type.

# Play a video file from the local network: action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.chromecast data: media_content_type: "video" media_content_id: "http://192.168.0.100/movies/sample-video.mkv" # Show a jpeg image: action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.chromecast data: media_content_type: "image/jpeg" media_content_id: "http://via.placeholder.com/1024x600.jpg/0B6B94/FFFFFF/?text=Hello,%20Home%20Assistant!"

Extra media metadata (for example title, subtitle, artist or album name) can be passed into the action and that will be shown on the Chromecast display. For the possible metadata types and values check Google cast documentation > MediaInformation > metadata field.

# Play a movie from the internet, with extra metadata provided: action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.chromecast data: media_content_type: "video/mp4" media_content_id: "http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4" extra: metadata: metadataType: 1 title: "BigBuckBunny" subtitle: "ByBlenderFoundation,LicensedundertheCreativeCommonsAttributionlicense" images: - url: "https://peach.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/watchtrailer.gif" # Play a netradio, with extra metadata provided: action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.chromecast data: media_content_type: "audio/mp3" media_content_id: "http://stream.tilos.hu:8000/tilos" extra: metadata: metadataType: 3 title: "RadioTILOS" artist: "LIVE" images: - url: "https://tilos.hu/images/kockalogo.png"

Casting with other apps

It’s possible to play with other apps than the default media receiver. To do so, media_content_type should be set to cast, and media_content_id should be a JSON dict with parameters for the app, including the app name.

BBC iPlayer

This app doesn’t retrieve its own metadata, so if you want the cast interface or media player card to show titles and/or images you will have to provide the data yourself. See the examples below.

Note: Media ID is NOT the 8 digit alphanumeric in the URL, it can be found by right-clicking the playing video. E.g., this episode shows:

2908kbps	dash (mf_cloudfront_dash_https)
b09w70r2	960x540

With b09w70r2 being the media_id

Media parameters

Mandatory:

• app_name: bbciplayer
• media_id: Item ID

Optional:

• is_live: Item is a live stream

Example

Example values to cast this episode

alias: "CastBBCiPlayertoMyChromecast" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.my_chromecast data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name":"bbciplayer", "media_id":"b09w70r2" }' extra: metadata: metadataType: 0 title: "Bitz&Bob" subtitle: "CastleMakeover" images: - url: "https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1280x720/p07j4m3r.jpg"

BBC Sounds

This app doesn’t retrieve its own metadata, so if you want the cast interface or media player card to show titles and/or images you will have to provide the data yourself. See the examples below.

Media parameters

Mandatory:

• app_name: bbcsounds
• media_id: Item ID

Optional:

• is_live: Item is a live stream

Example

Example values to cast BBC Radio 1

alias: "CastBBCSoundstoMyChromecast" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.my_chromecast data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name":"bbcsounds", "media_id":"bbc_radio_one", "is_live":true }' extra: metadata: metadataType: 0 title: "Radio1" images: - url: "https://sounds.files.bbci.co.uk/2.3.0/networks/bbc_radio_one/background_1280x720.png"

BubbleUPNP

The BubbleUPNP app has similar functionality to the built in Default Media Receiver app, and can be used as a backup if the default app fails to play the media.

Media parameters

Mandatory:

• app_name: bubbleupnp
• media_id: The URL to play

Optional:

• media_type: Media type, e.g. video/mp4, audio/mp3, image/jpeg, defaults to video/mp4.

Example

'cast_bubbleupnp_to_my_chromecast': alias: "CastavideotoMyChromecastusingBubbleUPNP" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.my_chromecast data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name":"bubbleupnp", "media_id":"http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4", "media_type":"video/mp4" }'

NRK Radio

Finding Media IDs

Media ID can be found in the URL, e.g:

• Live channel: https://radio.nrk.no/direkte/p1, media ID is p1
• Podcast: https://radio.nrk.no/podkast/tazte_priv/l_8457deb0-4f2c-4ef3-97de-b04f2c6ef314, media ID is l_8457deb0-4f2c-4ef3-97de-b04f2c6ef314
• On-demand program: https://radio.nrk.no/serie/radiodokumentaren/sesong/201011/MDUP01004510, media ID is MDUP01004510

Media parameters

• app_name: nrkradio
• media_id: NRK Radio media ID

Example

Example values to cast the item at https://radio.nrk.no/podkast/tazte_priv/l_8457deb0-4f2c-4ef3-97de-b04f2c6ef314

'cast_nrkradio_to_chromecast': alias: "CastNRKRadiotoChromecast" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.chromecast data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name":"nrkradio", "media_id":"l_8457deb0-4f2c-4ef3-97de-b04f2c6ef314" }'

NRK TV

Finding Media IDs

• Live programs: ID is in the URL, e.g. for https://tv.nrk.no/direkte/nrk1, the media ID is nrk1
• On-demand programs: ID is found by clicking share button, e.g. for https://tv.nrk.no/serie/uti-vaar-hage/sesong/2/episode/2 the share link is https://tv.nrk.no/se?v=OUHA43000207 and the media ID is OUHA43000207

Media parameters

• app_name: nrktv
• media_id: NRK TV media ID

Example

Example values to cast the item at https://tv.nrk.no/serie/uti-vaar-hage/sesong/2/episode/2

'cast_nrktv_to_chromecast': alias: "CastNRKTVtoChromecast" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.chromecast data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name":"nrktv", "media_id":"OUHA43000207" }'

Plex

To cast media directly from a configured Plex server, set the fields as documented in the Plex integration and prepend the media_content_id with plex://:

'cast_plex_to_chromecast': alias: "CastPlextoChromecast" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.chromecast data: media_content_type: movie media_content_id: 'plex://{"library_name":"Movies","title":"GroundhogDay"}'

Supla

Note: Media ID is NOT the 8 digit alphanumeric in the URL, it can be found by right-clicking the playing audio clip. E.g., this episode shows:

128bps	dash (mf_cloudfront_nonbidi_dash_https)
p009ycqz

With p009ycqz being the media_id

Media parameters

Mandatory:

• app_name: supla
• media_id: Supla item ID

Optional:

• is_live: Item is a livestream

Example

Example values to cast the item at https://www.supla.fi/audio/3601824

'cast_supla_to_my_chromecast': alias: "CastsuplatoMyChromecast" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.my_chromecast data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name":"supla", "media_id":"3601824" }'

YouTube

Media parameters

Mandatory:

• app_name: youtube
• media_id: YouTube video ID

Optional:

• enqueue: Enqueue only
• playlist_id: Play video with media_id from this playlist. Note that only providing playlist_id but no media_id does not work.

Example

'cast_youtube_to_my_chromecast': alias: "CastYouTubetoMyChromecast" sequence: - action: media_player.play_media target: entity_id: media_player.my_chromecast data: media_content_type: cast media_content_id: ' { "app_name":"youtube", "media_id":"dQw4w9WgXcQ" }'

Troubleshooting automatic discovery

mDNS relies on UDP multicast, which may fail for various reasons. If none of the tips in this section helps, the recommended solution is to ensure all cast devices have static IPs assigned to them and configure a list of known hosts.

Zeroconf configuration

The Google Cast integration relies on the Zeroconf integration for mDNS discovery. The Zeroconf integration has some configuration options which impact mDNS routing.

Cast devices and Home Assistant on different subnets

Cast devices can only be automatically discovered if they are on the same subnet as Home Assistant because mDNS packets are not routed across subnets. Automatic discovery in setups with cast devices on a different subnet than Home Assistant is not recommended and not supported. If it is not possible, it’s necessary to either enable mDNS forwarding between the subnets or to configure a list of known hosts.

Home Assistant Container

When running the Home Assistant Container in Docker, make sure it is running with host network mode. Running without it is not supported by the Home Assistant project, and will cause this integration to be unable to discover to your Cast devices.

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The Google Cast hub was introduced in Home Assistant pre 0.7, and it's used by 50.1% of the active installations. Its IoT class is Local Polling. View source on GitHub View known issues View feature requests Integration owners We are incredibly grateful to the following contributors who currently maintain this integration: @emontnemery On this page

• Configuration
• Options
• Home Assistant Cast
• Playing media
  • Using the built in media player app (Default Media Receiver)
  • Casting with other apps
  • BBC iPlayer
  • BBC Sounds
  • BubbleUPNP
  • NRK Radio
  • NRK TV
  • Plex
  • Supla
  • YouTube
• Troubleshooting automatic discovery
  • Zeroconf configuration
  • Cast devices and Home Assistant on different subnets
  • Home Assistant Container

Categories

• Media player