Android TV casting from Google Assistant has been completely broken for nearly a month

Ben Schoon | Apr 3 2019 - 7:31 am PT

Google’s platform for the big screen, Android TV, was recently subject to a potentially scary bug. To help ease concerns, Google temporarily disabled some of the related functionality, but nearly a month later, casting content from Google Assistant to Android TV is still totally broken, and the company has gone silent.

One big perk of Android TV is that every device on the platform essentially has a Chromecast built in. However, that functionality has been partially broken for quite some time.

As part of its reaction to the recent Google Photos bug, Google disabled casting content to Android TV by way of Google Assistant. This, of course, included Google Photos, but it also killed the ability to cast apps like YouTube or Spotify. As Android Police notes, plenty of Android TV users, especially Nvidia Shield owners, are complaining about this broken functionality.

This disabled functionality has been gone for nearly a month at this point, and Google has yet to confirm when it will be turned back on. One tweet from Google says that the company is “aware and working on a fix,” but no timeline was provided.

You can still cast to Android TV directly from apps on your phone or computer, but voice commands including those from Google Home won’t work. In my own testing, I noted that the functionality would appear to work, only to be followed by an error message. Especially given the platform’s growth, one would think this bug would be a priority for Google to fix.