A fairly large update this time. New features, improved UI and better app compatibility. Lots of deep changes across the entire project, so plenty of room for regressions to show up.
Known Issues
- Mirroring is still kinda broken. Screen mirroring works now, but requires a mouse click on the page to trigger the media stream request. Tab mirroring is still mostly just showing a black screen.
- Non-English localizations are missing a ton of messages now and are probably a pretty rough experience. Might do a point release with some updates (or disabling them until they're in a good state).
Changelog
Media Controls & Redesigned Popup UI
The popup can now act as a remote for Chromecast devices allowing you to control media playback with: play/pause, seeking, queue skipping, subtitles selection and volume controls. The current app and receiver status are shown along with any media metadata (if available). App icons and thumbnails aren't displayed, but could come in a later release as an optional feature.
It automatically updates as the app/media content on the device changes and controls are hidden depending on which media commands are supported by the receiver app. Different device types are now properly handled, displaying different icons for audio-only devices and limiting casting to valid receivers.
Advanced Whitelist Features
The user agent string for whitelisted items can now be customised instead of relying on the hard-coded string. Per-item configuration is now also possible, allowing you to disable whitelist items entirely or disable/customise user agent string replacement on specific sites/URLs.
The known apps list is integrated into the whitelist widget showing app names for recognised match patterns and providing a list of whitelist item presets to add directly from the options page.
Daemon
Some changes intended to make remote/non-local connections a more viable option:
- Added host option to daemon and restricted default host to
localhostinstead of binding to all addresses. - Added secure connections option to daemon. Uses an HTTPS server to establish WebSocket connections. Requires some additional configuration (see documentation).
- Added optional password authentication.
- Fixed issue with invalid message format causing daemon crash.
Other changes
- Fixed issue with the SDK media load callback being called before the media object had been updated. Improves compatibility and specifically fixes an issue with BBC iPlayer becoming unresponsive after initiating a cast session.
- Major refactor of SDK initialization/messaging and extension sender apps. Fixes some longstanding architectural mistakes which should make future improvements easier.
- Fixed media sender's media element synchronisation option. Only syncs state from the receiver instead of trying to keep both in sync at all times.
- Implemented two more stubbed
chrome.cast.media.Mediamethods (getEstimatedBreakTimeandgetEstimatedBreakClipTime). - Fixed device list not being sorted consistently.
- Fixed issue with bridge processes not being terminated properly.