Spotify Connect is currently broken when using Google Assistant, Chromecast devices

Ben Schoon | Apr 21 2021 - 9:10 am PT

Spotify has a lot of great features, but one of its best and most unique is Connect, a method of keeping the same listening session synced across all of your devices. Unfortunately, what seems like a bug is breaking Spotify Connect in multiple ways when using Google Assistant or Chromecast devices.

Support for casting music has been a part of Spotify for quite some time now, even expanding to the Windows/Mac apps last year. A list of Chromecast targets appears in the same menu as Spotify Connect.

Directly integrated Spotify Connect targets usually include other devices actively using the Spotify app such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, and TVs as well as speakers that have natively integrated Spotify Connect, though the latter is not all that common. Those targets usually load and connect immediately where Chromecast targets can take a moment to show up in the app. They’ve always been treated as a second thought by Spotify’s apps compared to regular Connect targets.

However, things are completely broken right now. You can still cast music from Spotify to a Chromecast target such as a Google Assistant speaker, but controls break. Spotify Connect no longer syncs with the Google Assistant or Chromecast device. That means the progress bar in the Spotify app no longer works, the app may show a different song than the one that’s playing, you can’t add songs to the queue, and more. It’s an all-around frustrating experience that seems to have broken just in the past few days.

We’ve been seeing the broken functionality for about four days now, but it was first reported by users about a week ago. In the time since, that thread has amassed nearly 500 comments from users on the issue.

Spotify is aware of this Connect issue with Google Assistant and Chromecast and investigating it, but no timeline was provided for a fix. Spotify was not immediately available to comment on the situation.