Older Chromecast fashions stopped working

Google began rolling out a repair for its damaged second-generation Chromecast and Chromecast Audio gadgets on Thursday. The difficulty quickly bricked 1000’s of streaming dongles because of an expired license earlier this week.

Right here’s what the Google help group stated on the Google Nest Group discussion board:

Hey everybody, thanks on your persistence whereas we work to resolve this difficulty. Right here’s the most recent:

We now have began to roll out a repair for the issue with Chromecast (2nd gen) and Chromecast Audio gadgets, which can be accomplished over the subsequent few days. Your machine should be related to obtain the replace.

For those who carried out a manufacturing facility reset throughout preliminary troubleshooting, you should still be experiencing a difficulty the place you can not re-setup your machine. We’re working to resolve this as quickly as potential. Please proceed to test the Group web page right here for updates and subsequent steps.

We’ll replace this publish once more when Google shares extra updates.

[The original article follows below.]

Final 12 months, Chromecast joined the Google Graveyard as the corporate ended manufacturing of the streaming dongles. The streaming gadgets themselves are nonetheless usable (for now), however this week, 1000’s of Chromecast second-gen and Chromecast Audio house owners found that their TV streaming dongles had out of the blue stopped working. Fortunately, they haven’t been turned off for good, as Google acknowledged the difficulty and commenced engaged on a repair.

Anybody who tried to attach their telephone to the 10-year-old Chromecast fashions this week noticed an error message indicating that it was an untrusted machine or couldn’t be authenticated. Whereas some customers suspected that Google was quietly bricking the growing older dongles, it seems that it’s truly a technical downside involving the firmware.

As defined by a Reddit person in a busy thread (by way of Ars Technica), Google constructed a certificates into the 2015 Chromecast fashions that expired on March 9, 2025. That simply so occurs to be precisely when all of those Chromecast customers began operating into hassle.

In a publish on the Google Nest Group boards, Google confirmed discovering “an rising difficulty impacting Chromecast 2nd gen and Chromecast Audio gadgets” and stated {that a} repair is coming. Within the meantime, the corporate tells customers to not manufacturing facility reset their gadgets.

“Don’t manufacturing facility reset your machine – we are going to hold you all up to date when the repair rolls out,” warns Google in a message. “When you’ve got already manufacturing facility reset your machine, we are going to present directions to set your machine again up as quickly as potential.”

Whether or not Google will proceed to help these older streaming media gamers for the lengthy haul stays to be seen, however on the very least, the corporate is dedicated to fixing this downside. You’ll want to test the Google Nest Group thread for updates.