AutoCast

joaomgcd

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this app

Automate Your TV with AutoCast.

******IMPORTANT NOTE*****
Please don't rate the app 1 star because it's not a standalone app. Contact me for a refund if you've bought it thinking otherwise.
AutoCast is a Tasker plugin. You need to have Tasker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm) installed to use most of its features, so please be aware of that before using it.

You can get a free trial of Tasker here: http://tasker.dinglisch.net/download.html

Also, to create everything you see in the demo video you need other Tasker plugins. Please read the video description. Please don't rate the app 1 star because of this. This is not supposed to be a standalone app at all. Thank you for understanding.
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Learn all about AutoCast here: http://joaoapps.com/autocast/

This is a demo version of the app with these restrictions:you'll always cast pre-determined images, audio and video. Text you cast with the lite version will be prepended with "AutoCast Demo".

Get the full app by buying the unlocker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.autocast.unlock) or an in-app purchase.


AutoCast is a Tasker plugin that gives you full control over your Chromecast. It not only enables you to cast images, audio and video from Tasker, but you can also cast and control many other local or web contents, like YouTube videos and playlists, notifications, voice, and web pages! You can also take over other apps that are being cast and control their playback!


CUSTOM SCREENS (Learn how to create one here: http://joaoapps.com/autocast/custom-screens/)


In AutoCast anything you cast is a custom screen.
Built-in screens:
- "Full Screen Media". Here you can cast video, photos and audio in full screen, so they look their best. For example you can cast a slideshow and at the same time listen to the system Audio from your phone. Or you can be watching a movie in AutoCast while you receive all your Android notifications on your TV. You can even watch a slideshow of photos and videos, all in a row.
- "Alternate Home Screen". Here you have a screen that is really similar to the built-in Chromecast homescreen, but it shows whatever photos you want and you can add any info you like on to it, like the current weather, or if the heater in your house is currently on. Like in all screens you also get all the goodies of an AutoCast screen, so you can get notifications on it for example, or you can play some music in the background.

You can also cast any existing web page you like, assuming that the page allows for this.
My goal with AutoCast is that people from around the world start creating their own awesome custom screens which you can then easily import into AutoCast and use.

YOUTUBE INTEGRATION
In AutoCast you can cast a YouTube video or playlist on to any screen. With the help of AutoShare you can cast a YouTube video from your Android Web Browser for example. Or with the help of AutoRemote you can cast a playlist from the YouTube Website.

MULTIPLE SOURCES
With AutoCast you can cast media from an ever growing list of websites and sources like Dropbox, Vimeo, Flickr, Gametrailers and more! For example, you can cast all the photos on the Flickr explore page as a slideshow. Or you can cast a Gametrailers video from your favourite RSS reader on Android.


MULTIPLE USERS
Because AutoCast can also send messages from your Chromecast to your Android device, you can also create collaborative casting apps, like a photo editor where multiple people are editing the same image.


CONTROL AND INFO
You can control the playback of media in AutoCast as well as some other apps like YouTube, Google Play Music or Plex. You can also get info on what is currently playing, so you could build a remote Chromecast controller on your PC for example.The possibilities are endless!

Ratings and reviews

Most of the functions in the plugin do not work correctly. AutoCast Best Guess gets the video on the screen, but AutoCast Media Controls don't work, neither does the standard AutoCast action (results in a black screen). Seems like it's been somewhat abandoned as most threads and videos refer to 2016 or prior, if issues are not planned on being fixed it should be removed from the app store, wasted several hours on this only to have a profile that still doesn't work as intended.

I struggle a bit with this. On one Chromecast I had no luck with the Full Screen Media screen and the Home Screen Replacement only displayed local images if there was more than one. It doesn't work at all on another. No persistent notifications ever appear when casting and the App command to stop casting doesn't work. A redundant speak command has to be used to stop it instead. Tasker seems to wait for Speak actions to finish before continuing and it would be nice if it were possible for it to continue processing while the speaker is doing its bit and be able to queue up further casts. Tasker can be quite sluggish at the best of times and those extra seconds would be very useful. As with many of the Auto apps, there is often a lack of basic documentation at the point of configuration, and what you can find elsewhere is sometimes out of date and a bit hit and miss. It's the simple stuff like what options actually do and why you might want to use them, the correct format for filling in text fields, and so on. It can be hard to get started.

You say that this can cast YouTube playlists but I don't see how. There is nothing in the settings anywhere for YouTube. The website has no instructions for AutoCast and there is nothing in the forums. The most helpful thing has been the video tutorial (v=iRlCsEWKxnc) but what it shows doesn't match what I am seeing in the app. In the video, they click on "AutoCast Other App". But in Tasker, when I click on plugins, I see just "AutoCast" which I click on and there there is "App" which I assume is supposed to be the same thing. But on the configuration screen the video shows a "YouTube Url" field, but I don't have that option at all. I only have "Cast Device" (which makes sense), "AutoCast Service" and "Keep Current Screen" (which are check boxes); and a bunch of persistent notification settings. I have no idea what this Action is supposed to be used for. I went through the other possible actions and nothing looked like it would work. The only hint I have is that it seems there could be some javascript I could enter into a Free Form Data field that might work but I have no idea what to put in there... I was able to use this to cast a 1 local audio file, which was nice.

What's new

- fixed issue where app would freeze with the privacy policy dialog when entering the AutoCast Speak action in Tasker