Today I learned you can surf YouTube on old Chromecasts with a hidden phone remote

Did you know the YouTube app on your older Chromecast has a hidden remote management that lets you floor a complete YouTube app that you can scroll?

You simply want to begin casting one thing to your TV within the YouTube app with the Solid button up prime — then hit the Solid button a second time to entry a menu the place you’ll discover a button labeled Remote. Then, you get a full D-pad to maneuver round, a voice search button, and the all-important Again button you’ll have to again out of that video and entry a full YouTube interface.

Initially, the Google Chromecast HDMI dongle required you to regulate it largely out of your phone, “casting” each video you needed to look at to your TV display screen as an alternative of shopping — till the 2020 Chromecast with Google TV added its personal bodily remote.

However apparently, that modified. Chrome Unboxed reported in February that the YouTube app on Chromecast had added a shopping expertise with the hidden remote, and websites like 9to5Google and Android Police at the moment are reporting that it’s broadly rolling out to older dongles just like the third-gen Chromecast and Chromecast Extremely. That’s a good bonus if you just lately nabbed the Extremely for $22.22 within the Stadia sale.

I can’t affirm when it rolled out, however I do see that Google’s support page has officially added instructions for using the remote, one thing that the Wayback Machine tells me wasn’t but there again on, say, October 5th, and the corporate tweeted about the feature yesterday.

The phone remote is a little laggy in comparison with utilizing a devoted remote and even utilizing an iPhone to regulate an Apple TV, nevertheless it works high quality thus far on my Chromecast Extremely. I’d most likely use it a lot if I valued YouTube’s suggestions extra. (I don’t perceive why it retains recommending movies I’ve already watched and ones from a few years in the past.) I want it had been accessible in Netflix, the place I do are inclined to scroll a lot, however I didn’t see the choice there.