Airfoil and Chromecast Devices
Posted By Quentin Carnicelli on March 1st, 2016
Update (October 28th, 2016): Airfoil for Mac 5.5 and higher now offer support for Google Chromecast! Read all about it in the Airfoil for Mac 5.5 blog post.
Windows users, stay tuned. We’re hard at work on adding Chromecast support to Airfoil for Windows as well.
Since Google introduced their first Chromecast device, we’ve been receiving requests for Airfoil to support sending audio to this hardware. While initially the devices were heavily focused on video, recent updates, including the new Chromecast for Audio, made this a better fit.
At the end of last year, we began research on enabling Airfoil to send audio to Chromecast devices. We’re now wrist-deep in code to implement support for streaming via the Chromecast (v2) protocol. We’ve got the basic groundwork laid, but there’s still a lot more to do. We need to sort out all the intricacies of a new protocol, integrate it with Airfoil’s existing user interface, and make it robust enough to ship out. The final product is still some time off, but given the high demand we’ve seen for Chromecast support, we wanted to let you know that we’re actively working on it. When this work is finally ready, we plan to include it in a free update to Airfoil 5.
For now, you can use the newest updates to Airfoil for Mac and Windows to send audio to AirPlay and Bluetooth outputs. To hear more news on both Airfoil’s Chromecast support and other big updates from Rogue Amoeba, subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, or even like us on Facebook. As always, stay tuned!
Avi says:
March 1st, 2016 at 6:59 pmWill that include support for being an AirPlay receiver too? If I could use Airfoil to make my Mac be an AirPlay receiver that forwarded audio onto my Chromecast Audio, that would be amazing.
Ruben Pedro says:
March 2nd, 2016 at 6:58 amYeyy!! :D That will make the whole thing (almost) complete!
It would be great if you add support to receive Chromecast in Airfoil Satellite!
Quentin Carnicelli says:
March 2nd, 2016 at 4:45 pmAvi – With Airfoil Satellite you can turn your computer into an AirPlay receiver. If you then point Airfoil at Airfoil Satellite, it can then re-broadcast it out over [AirPlay, Bluetooth, forthcoming-Chromecast]. So yeh, it’s not the most elegant setup, but it should certainly be do-able.
As for receiving Chromecast, keep sending in those feature requests and we’ll see.
Avi says:
March 3rd, 2016 at 8:52 pmCount me in for that.
BTW I was playing with an unregistered Airfoil Satellite running solo, and I couldn’t get it to receive an AirPlay stream. I see it as an AirPlay device on my iPhone, but when I switch to it as an output the iPhone app stops playing. Satellite just sits there on my Mac in the “Waiting for Audio” state the whole time.
If I need a key for it, then I’ll wait for the Chromecast support in Airfoil.