Many people who use older Chromecast devices recently got a shock when their devices stopped playing content. The company discontinued the brand last year, leading people to think it was a planned obsolescence. Here’s some good news. It’s just a software issue, and Google is working on a fix.
The company sent out an email to users saying that its engineers are “working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and will keep you updated when more information becomes available.” Google was vague about the issue, but at least we know a fix is coming.
The issue primarily affects older Chromecasts and Chromecast Audio devices, preventing them from casting. Google says it has identified the cause of the issue, but isn’t giving any details.
However, the company is warning users not to perform a factory reset on Chromecast devices affected by the issue. Doing so will completely lock out the device. Google suggested that this would help these people, as a factory reset would likely be one of the first troubleshooting steps, but didn’t provide a timeframe.
One Reddit user claims to have found an issue that’s causing devices to lose functionality, noting that it’s “most likely due to the certificate built into the Chromecast having expired.” The person said the certificate states that it will no longer be active after March 9th, which is the day before many models started failing.
For the uninitiated, this issue causes an “untrusted device” error.
For the uninitiated, this issue causes an “untrusted device error” whenever someone tries to cast on certain models. The only option is to ignore the error, which disables casting. 2nd generation Chromecast devices from 2015 and Chromecast Audio are affected.
