Casting features are now baked into Chrome itself, so you no longer need the Chromecast extension. If you want to do the same with your desktop, you only need Chrome installed. What it does work well for is showing your locally stored photos to a roomful of people or browsing the web on a larger screen using the phone as a controller. Sadly, this doesn't work well for streaming local videos, as the frame rate is typically pretty low and audio gets out of sync very easily.

Select which Chromecast you want to use, and your entire screen will be streamed to the television. Just pull down the notification shade and tap Cast. However, if you're an Android user, you can mirror your device display to any TV. The Chromecast's highlight feature is streaming video from YouTube, Netflix and any other application that supports it. You can swipe through these to install any Chromecast-compatible app that you want to add. Scroll down the feed and you'll see items for Chromecast - Sports, Chromecast - News and Chromecast Audio - Music. But what else can you stream to your TV? To find out, all you have to do is open the Google Home app on your phone and select the Discover tab. You know the standard apps that support Chromecast - YouTube, Netflix, Pandora, etc.

You also have the option to tweak the speed at which new photos show, from 5 seconds to 10 minutes, and you choose to display other information on the screen including the current weather and time. In Device settings, tap Ambient Mode and select Google Photos and then select a slideshow to display.

If you want to use your own photos, download the Google Home app to your Android or iOS device, tap your Chromecast from the list of your devices on the Home tab and tap the gear icon to open settings. When you're not using your Chromecast, it turns your television into a giant digital photo frame, displaying photographs of beautiful scenery.

Google home chromecast setup for mac