Chromecast Outage: Second Generation and Audio Devices Unable to Cast, Leaving Users Frustrated

Chromecast (2nd Gen) and Chromecast Audio Outage

Over the past few hours, users of the Chromecast (2nd generation) and Chromecast Audio devices have experienced a significant issue where they are unable to cast any audio or video content. The error message displayed is 'Untrusted device: [name] couldn’t be verified. This could be caused by outdated device firmware.'

Symptoms:

• Users receive an unresolvable dialog box in apps like YouTube, preventing them from casting.
• No known workaround, including reboots or resets, resolves the issue.
• The screensaver functionality (Google Photos, art, etc.) continues to work as expected.
• Newer Chromecast models, such as the 3rd generation and Ultra, are not affected.

User Reactions:

• Users speculate that Google has 'bricked' their devices or is announcing an end-of-life for these models.
• However, this is likely a bug rather than an intentional deprecation, as there have been no official announcements from Google about discontinuing support for these devices.

Context:

• The affected Chromecast (2nd gen) and Audio were announced in September 2015 and are running firmware version 1.56.x.
• Google has not made similar deprecation announcements for older devices like the original Chromecast, which still functions as of May 2023.

Status:

• As of Monday, Google is aware of the issue and is working on a fix, likely to be deployed server-side.