I know that a great many of you have been waiting a long time for VLC Chromecast support.
The good news? Chromecast support in VLC is here, and it’s ready for testing!
The bad news? It doesn’t work very well – at least not for everyone who’s tried it this early.
Nightly Only
Patchy performance and a less-than-glamourous setup are to be expected as Chromecast support is not yet in the stable builds of the versatile open-source media player.
Nope. You need to be running the very latest VLC nightly builds — read: buggy, bleeding edge development snapshots — and, right now, only the Windows version currently plays nice.
Results will reportedly vary depending on the media file you try to ‘cast’. Different formats appear to behave differently, something that’s hard to square with the usually seamless streaming the service is renowned for.
How To Use Chromecast in VLC 3.0 Nightly
Enough waffle, you’re here to know how to stream video to your Chromecast using VLC.
It’s no use looking for the familiar “cast” icon: it’s not here. Instead, you’ll need to use ye olde fashioned menus to get your streams up and running:
- Go to Video > Renderer > Scan
- Go to Video > Renderer > Your Chromecast
- Open a video file and hit play
- Click ‘View Certificate’ when prompted
- Click ‘Accept permanently’ when prompted
That should be it. You should see something on your Cast-enabled TV screen. Will it be 100% perfect playback? Probably not. I couldn’t get anything more than a few choppy seconds to spit, sputter and fail.
But like I said: it’s very early days for this feature. If you jump in to try it this early you have to accept it’s not “end user” ready.
I hope you have more success — be sure to share your experience in the comments below.