Chromecast with Google TV

Chromecast with Google TV is the culprit behind broken speaker groups for some, fix coming [U]

Ben Schoon | Apr 19 2021 - 1:10 pm PT

A useful feature of Google Assistant speakers and Android TVs is the ability to select a bunch of them to play the same audio simultaneously. It’s a useful feature, but if the new Chromecast with Google TV is a part of your speaker group, it may also be breaking them.

Article updated on April 19th with information from Google.

Prior to the release of the new Chromecast, Google had been working for some time to enable speaker groups to work with Android TV devices. After all, it was a headlining feature of older Chromecast models, so the new one just couldn’t lack it. While it does work at this point, some users have run into issues.

An issue highlighted by the folks over at Android Police, some users have noticed that their speaker groups will randomly stop playing and just buffers continuously. Obviously, it’s frustrating, and it seems to happen with all music services, too. The culprit? While it can’t be said as a fact, it sure looks like the new Chromecast with Google TV is the one causing the problem, and it’s still happening several months and multiple updates later.

Personally, I’ve been experiencing this exact phenomenon for a fair bit, but I didn’t actually realize the Chromecast was the cause. Rather, I figured it was just a quirk with Spotify. I’m not alone, though, as quite a few users have reported this problem on Google’s forums dating all the way back to October of last year.

Apparently, a workaround for the issue is to add the new Chromecast to a speaker group after playback has started, a feature Google rolled out in recent months. The new Chromecast may still trigger a pause or freeze when those groups are set up, but in that case, it doesn’t stop playback on all devices, just itself.

Update 4/19: After being silent on this issue, Google has confirmed to 9to5Google that is aware of this problem. Two months after our original report, the issue is still affecting users but it may not be for much longer. Google tells us that a fix for this problem will be rolling out “in the next few weeks.”