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If you happen to be a frequent Chromecast user, you may have used your streaming dongle in tangent with the mobile hotspot on your phone as some point. Unfortunately, an update to Google Play Services in early June broke that ability.
To clarify, what we’re talking about here is the capability to utilize your smartphone’s mobile hotspot as the internet connection for a Chromecast or Chromecast audio. According to Android Police, a recent update to Play Services to version 11.0.55 disabled the feature. As users began expressing their discontent in the Google Forums, the initial response from moderators went as follows:
Mobile hotspots are not officially supported for Chromecast. Chromecast needs access to a secure, wireless network with internet access to work as intended.
It makes sense, I guess. Mobile hotspots aren’t exactly the Fort Knox of secure connections. However, a member of the Chromecast team quickly jumped into the conversation and offered some hope for disgruntled users.
It appears a recent update to improve the reliability of your Chromecast unintentionally disabled the ability to cast from your Android device when the device is acting as a Wi-Fi hotspot. This is not an officially supported functionality, but we recognize that many of you found this to be a helpful option to cast your content. Our team is on a fix for this, and you can expect to see it released later this summer.
Vivian W.
While an official fix for the issue has yet to be released, an update from Android Police says the latest Beta version of Play Services appears to have resolved the issue. Version 11.5.03 is currently available in the Beta testing program and should likely roll out in coming weeks.
If you’re hankering to get this feature back you can enroll in the Beta program by following the directions here. Alternately, you can grab the latest version from APK Mirror and side load it. I have to say that I pretty impressed Google was so quick to fix this issue. Not being an “officially” supported feature, they easily could have said, “deal with it.” Kudos to you Alphabet and the Chromecast team.
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Source: Android Police via 9to5Google
