Hi Plex Team!
I’m having trouble getting previous/next control to work while casting music from Plex.
I can control these elements from the Plex App / Plexamp / Web Interface just fine (when casting music to my Google Home devices); however, asking the speaker to go to the next track or even trying to use the previous/next controls to skip songs through the Google Home app does not work.
I don’t want to always use the Plex or Plexamp app to skip songs, as I don’t always have my phone and it’s much more convenient to ask the Assistant to go to the next song. I’d presume this functionality is available with Plex (as it is on every other platform I’ve ever used), so I can only assume that I have set something up wrong?
If I’m casting music to my Chromecast on my TV, must I use the Plex app to go to the next track?
Why can’t I use the built-in functionality of casting (through the phone notification that appears or otherwise) to go to the next track? It works with every other service/platform…
I’m not sure what function you are referring to, but the regular Chromecast notification on your phone uses something called Shared Controls. That doesn’t offer skip options in there. Cast media control notifications - Chromecast Help
Indeed, I am referring to Shared Controls. This is what I see when casting Stan and what I want to see when casting Plex (note the previous and next buttons):
I did a little research and it appears that is controlled by the Chromecast feature itself and not something apps can control. It looks to me like it depends on the Chromecast SDK being used by each app. The newest SDK needs to be used to show those controls. However, that SDK requires Android API 27 (i.e Android 8.1). Since the Plex app supports devices older than that, we can’t upgrade or we’d have to stop supporting those older devices. Maybe one day.
Ah, that’s completely understandable. Thanks for taking the time to explain the situation, and for continuing to support older devices - that means more to most people (and even to me) than having support for this feature. Keep up the great work!
Isn’t this something related to the actual Chromecast app running at Chromecasts themselves, rather than the app used to cast it ( Android Plex app or Plexamp ) ?
As the shared controls / or being able to control the casting from Google Home app is possible from all the android phones on the network regardless of having the plex apps installed.
Also for instance Spotify or any other media app capable of casting to Chromecast I use exposes Next/Forward controls and Spotify doesn’t state it needs Android 8.1 or higher .
I don’t know how Spotify works. It’s possible they have multiple versions of the app that get installed depending on the Android version. They have enough people that they could do that. Plex isn’t able to maintain multiple versions of the app so we have 1 that supports all the devices.
I doesn’t seem to be needing more versions of the app, that would be crazy to maintain as you said.
What I meant is that this feature doesn’t seem to be related to the app running on the phones but rather the Chromecast app ( i guess it’s using the Web Receiver App SDK to create a custom chromecast app ) . The phone apps are then just using the control capabilities of that app.
The available controls should be able to be specified in the receiver app :
That’s on the receiving end, so what you see on the TV. That doesn’t change what you see on the phone/tablet doing the casting. To be clear, we are talking about seeing those controls on the casting device, not on the TV.
Yes, we’re talking about seeing those controls on the casting device, but they need to be enabled on the receiver end to show up on the casting device.
Those controls are exposed to any android phone ( in the notification drawer or google home app ) on the network, not just the one casting. So they are not related to the version of the Plex android app.
Here is a quote from one of the links i posted earlier :
" The UI controls provided on the iOS and Android sender expanded controllers and touch devices are driven by the [ MediaStatus.supportedMediaCommands ]. This value can be changed on the Web Receiver by:"
I’m using a Pixel 4 with Android 12, and when casting the Plex android app to my Chromecast Ultra, I actually do see the full suite of Shared Controls on my phone. However, tapping previous/next does nothing, while tapping play/pause works fine.
For the same reason, I believe: if I cast Plex from Pixel 4 to CC Ultra, and then I speak to my Assistant (whether it be on a phone, or a Home Mini that knows its in the same room as the CC Ultra, doesn’t matter) about controlling the CC Ultra, it will happily play/pause but it refuses to do previous/next.
Also: I have this same experience regardless of whether I cast from Plex (Android), or Plexamp (Android), or even from https://app.plex.tv on a laptop, etc.
Therefore, it’s fairly safe to say that the Plex Chromecast App is the culprit, since the combination of [laptop and home mini] doesn’t involve Android at all. Is there an SDK update available for the Chromecast app, which won’t alienate older hardware?
