Google Chromecast+
Hubitat integration for Google Cast / Chromecast devices
Features
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Auto-discovery of Cast devices on your network (manual IP entry as a fallback)
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Announcements (TTS) with optional volume, then auto-restore of whatever was playing
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Play media by URL (audio or video)
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Playback control — play, pause, stop, next / previous, seek, volume, mute
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Now-playing status — title, artist, album art, position, current app, and playback state
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Launch / stop Cast apps
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Real-time updates over a persistent connection, or quieter on-demand polling
Reliable announcements: fixes the built-in integration's 2‑second TTS cutoff / first‑word clipping.
Installation
Install via Hubitat Package Manager (HPM) — search for Google Chromecast+.
Setup
- Apps → Add user app → Google Chromecast+
- Wait for discovery to find your devices — 15–60s on first open, while the hub fills its mDNS cache in the background.
- Check the devices you want, then click Done.
Auto-discovery needs Hubitat firmware 2.4.1.151+. On older firmware, add devices under Add a device by IP.
How it works
Each Chromecast or Google speaker you pick becomes its own device in Hubitat, all grouped under a single Google Chromecast+ parent device. The parent gives you an at-a-glance summary — how many devices you have and how many are playing right now; each child device is the one you actually control.
Every device looks like a standard speaker to Hubitat, so it works out of the box with rules, dashboards, and the HD+ app. From a rule or dashboard you can:
- Make an announcement (text-to-speech) — see below
- Play media from a URL (a sound effect, a radio stream, a video)
- Control playback — play, pause, stop, next / previous, seek
- Set volume or mute
- See what's playing — title, artist, album art, and which app is running
Announcements (text-to-speech)
This is the feature most people use, so here's exactly what happens when a rule or dashboard tells a speaker to "speak" something:
- Hubitat turns your text into audio. The spoken voice comes from Hubitat's own built-in text-to-speech, not from this app — so the voice, language, and audio quality are whatever your Hubitat is set up to use. This app just plays the resulting clip.
- The speaker is woken up first. Idle Google/Nest speakers put their amplifier to sleep, and if audio starts the instant they're idle they swallow the first word — you hear "...ont door is open" instead of "Front door is open." To prevent this, the app first plays a brief silent clip (a "lead-in") to wake the speaker, then swaps in your message. Displays like the Nest Hub need a little more lead-in than plain speakers, so the app adjusts automatically.
- Your message plays.
- Whatever was playing before comes back. If music was playing when the announcement fired, the app restores it afterward — so an announcement politely interrupts and then resumes.
Announcement volume. You can optionally give an announcement its own volume (say, louder for a doorbell alert). If you don't set one, the message simply plays at the speaker's current volume and the app doesn't touch the volume at all. Leaving it blank is the quietest option — see Troubleshooting if you're hearing beeps.
Advanced / technical details
Skip this unless you like knowing what's under the hood.
- No bridge, no add-ons. The driver speaks Google's native Cast protocol (CASTV2) directly to each device over an encrypted socket on port 8009 — there's no external server, Node app, or cloud service in the middle. The logic is modeled after Home Assistant's Cast integration.
- Discovery reads the hub's own mDNS cache (
_googlecast._tcp), which is why it needs Hubitat firmware 2.4.1.151+. Anything not found automatically can be added by IP. A device's type (speaker / video-display / group) is detected from its advertised capabilities and used to pick the right announcement lead-in. - Two connection modes, set per device: a persistent connection for real-time now-playing updates (default), or quieter on-demand polling that connects only when needed. A heartbeat keeps the persistent connection healthy.
- The two classic TTS bugs, fixed. The built-in integration's ~2-second announcement cutoff is fixed by answering the device's heartbeat pings immediately and only restoring the previous content after a real end-of-playback signal (not a transient one). First-word clipping is fixed by the silent lead-in described above — a tiny silent WAV generated on the hub and served from
http://<hub-ip>/local/. - Volume restore. If an announcement set its own volume, the app puts the previous volume back when it finishes — but only if it actually changed it. An announcement with no volume set sends no volume commands at all (this is what keeps volume-beep-happy devices quiet).
- Media resume limits. Content the app cast itself can be truly resumed. Content from a third-party app (Spotify, YouTube, etc.) can only be relaunched — Cast doesn't let an outside controller resume someone else's stream at its exact position.
- Settings. Integration-wide: status refresh interval, pre-roll silence on/off, lead-in delay, and debug logging (auto-off after 24h). Per device: real-time-vs-polling and announcement volume.
Troubleshooting
Most reports are about announcements, so start here.
The first word is cut off
The speaker's amp is still waking up. Make sure Pre-roll silence is on (app settings), then raise the Lead-in delay — leave it blank for automatic, or try 1–2 seconds. The lead-in delay is integration-wide, so raising it adds a little latency to every device; displays generally need more than plain speakers.
The announcement cuts off after ~2 seconds
That was the built-in integration's signature bug and should be fixed here. If you still see it, it usually means the connection is dropping — enable debug logging (below) and report it.
I hear beeps / chirps around the announcement
Those are the device's own volume-change confirmation sounds — the same blip you get pressing the volume buttons — and they fire whenever the app changes the volume. They are not the normal Cast "ding."
- If you're not setting a per-announcement volume, the current version sends no volume commands, so there should be no chirps.
- If you are setting an announcement volume, some models beep once as the volume changes. That's the speaker's firmware; it can't be fully suppressed for volume changes. Workaround: leave the announcement volume blank and set the speaker's volume ahead of time with a separate volume action, or accept the single beep.
- On some Nest speakers the beep's pitch rises with the volume level, and speaker groups may beep once per member — so the same setup can sound different from one device to the next.
No audio at all
- Confirm Hubitat's text-to-speech works — it's a platform feature. If Hubitat can't produce speech audio, there's nothing for the app to play.
- Make sure the speaker can reach the hub on your LAN: the silent lead-in clip is served from the hub, so a device on another subnet or an isolated IoT/guest VLAN may not be able to fetch it.
- Check the device isn't muted or set to zero volume.
Why do my devices behave differently?
"Cast" spans a lot of hardware — Nest Mini and Nest Audio speakers, Nest Hub displays, Chromecast dongles and Android TVs, and third-party speakers from JBL, Sony, LG, and others. They differ in how deeply they sleep the amp (how much lead-in they need), whether and when they beep on volume changes, how quickly they start playing, and how they handle groups. So a rule that sounds perfect on one speaker may clip or beep on another. Tune the knobs to match your worst-behaving device — announcement volume is per device, and the lead-in delay is integration-wide.
Reporting an issue
Reproducible issues are the ones that get fixed. To help:
- Turn on Enable debug logging in the app (it turns itself off after 24h).
- Reproduce the problem once.
- Open Logs, filter to the device, and copy the relevant lines into a code snippet in this support thread
- Include anything else that might help narrow it down.. try to isolate the issue into as few steps as possible
Why write this when a built-in app already exists?
I spent some time with Home Assistant recently and really liked how it auto detected all of my Chromecast devices (Google Mini speakers, Android TV devices, JBL Speakers with cast support).
I remembered Hubitat has a built-in Chromecast app but it never worked very well for me. After reading lots of support threads I had the feeling this might be a good one to tackle. I wrote it with Claude (AI) and modeled the logic after the Home Assistant code. I've been testing primarily with HD+ - my primary use case is just having it report the currently playing media
I can't guarantee it'll be better than the built-in version but if you have issues that I can test/reproduce I'll try to fix them. And it's open source so worst case anyone can use AI to fix any issues that come up in the future.
. Thanks!
