PyChromecast Documentation

You can discover Chromecasts on your network using pychromecast.get_listed_chromecasts(). You can filter by friendly_names and adjust the discovery_timeout if devices are not being found.

To stop discovery, use pychromecast.discovery.stop_discovery(browser).

PyChromecast requires Python 3.11+ and depends on the requests, protobuf, and zeroconf packages. You can install the necessary dependencies using pip:

pip install -r requirements.txt

PyChromecast uses mDNS for device discovery, which relies on multicast UDP on port 5353. For discovery to work, ensure:

• Multicast UDP is forwarded by your Wi-Fi router.
• The device running PyChromecast allows inbound and outbound traffic on port 5353.
• The device is on the same subnet as the Chromecast devices.

If these conditions cannot be met, you can pass a list of known IP addresses or hostnames directly to the discovery functions.

To communicate with custom apps on a Chromecast, you must implement a custom controller by subclassing BaseController. You define the namespace in the constructor, implement receive_message to handle incoming data, and use send_message to send data to the device. Register the controller using cast.register_handler().

from pychromecast.controllers import BaseController

class MyController(BaseController):
    def __init__(self):
        super(MyController, self).__init__("urn:x-cast:my.super.awesome.namespace")

    def receive_message(self, message, data):
        print("Wow, I received this message: {}".format(data))
        return True  # indicate you handled this message

    def request_beer(self):
        self.send_message({'request': 'beer'})

# Register the controller to a cast instance
cast.register_handler(MyController())

If your Chromecast reports incorrect is_active_input status due to CEC incompatibilities, you can instruct PyChromecast to ignore this value by appending a Linux-style wildcard or a specific device name to the pychromecast.IGNORE_CEC list.

import pychromecast

# Ignore CEC on all devices
pychromecast.IGNORE_CEC.append('*')

# Ignore CEC on a specific Chromecast by name
pychromecast.IGNORE_CEC.append('Living Room')