Google begins offering suggestions for which smart home device you may want to cast to

While not something particularly mind blowing, a small, new tweak to the Google Cast UI on Android seeks to get your music or videos up and running on your smart home devices with less effort. In the past, tapping the Cast icon at the top right of YouTube or YouTube Music among other cast-enabled apps would only reveal a list of Nest Hubs, Minis, Audios, Chromecasts, and more that exist on your Wi-Fi network, but now, a convenient addition is joining said list.

If you look at the image below, you’ll notice that a smart chip for a “Suggested” cast device for my playback session is now listed. In this example, the “Bathroom speaker” is often (and I mean very often) used to blast music while I shower, so since Google recognized that habit somehow either by time or the song being played (I think it has more to do with that being the only time I cast music as of late instead of simply playing it on another device) it suggested it to me.

This began showing up for us over the past week, and should be available to everyone either immediately or soon. Again, while not a huge deal, it did save me time because I had no need to read the list of cast devices. While the list does feature icons to easily differentiate devices from one another, this still proved to be much faster for getting my music playing.

The company is rethinking its approach to casting as of its I/O Developer conference this year, even going to far as to allow users to cast audio from their phones to their Chromebooks among other things. It seems to me that the traditional casting experience is also being rethought so that users can have more convenience than ever.