Now YouTube gained’t let customers log in on some Chromecasts

Google has seemingly outdone itself in the case of discontinuing merchandise and experiences in a brief period of time — as 9to5Google experiences, after rolling out a brand new interface for some older Chromecasts final winter, the corporate has mainly made it ineffective. In a reply to a customer on Twitter, the corporate says you’re now not capable of log in to your YouTube account on older variations of the streaming puck, leaving you higher off simply casting out of your cellphone (particularly should you pay to see an ad-free YouTube).

Whereas selecting movies in your cellphone and sending them to your TV by the Chromecast was initially how the gadget was presupposed to work, Google not too long ago added to that have. Final 12 months, customers acquired the power to make use of their telephones as a distant to scroll by a YouTube UI on the Chromecast, letting them use their large display to pick movies.

When you can technically nonetheless flick thru YouTube utilizing your cellphone as a distant, you’ll have to take action as a logged-out visitor — no customized suggestions, playlists, or viewing historical past from the remainder of your gadgets immediately on the Chromecast. For YouTube Premium subscribers, it’s even worse; at present, in the event that they use the YouTube interface on the Chromecast, it’ll embrace the advertisements they pay to not see on the remainder of their gadgets.

Whereas that is principally a minor inconvenience (once more, you can nonetheless use your cellphone to queue up movies, which can play with out advertisements should you’re a Premium subscriber), the weird factor is how Google has communicated pulling a serious a part of a comparatively new characteristic. Right here’s Google in December 2021, tweeting to point out off how you possibly can get YouTube’s UI immediately on the Chromecast:

And right here it’s in June 2022, dropping a bombshell to most customers that signing into YouTube is now not supported on “older Chromecast devices:”

Discuss whiplash — there are dozens of replies to YouTube asking why it’s eliminated the characteristic and why it didn’t announce that it was doing so, leaving customers pissed off by an unexplained “Can’t sign in” error message. We’ve reached out to Google to ask why it made the change and to get an inventory of precisely which Chromecast gadgets this impacts, however to date, we haven’t acquired a response.

There’s yet one more twist that makes this complete factor even stranger. In a discussion board reply noticed by Android Police, a Google group supervisor says that the corporate is working to resolve a problem the place Premium members see advertisements when utilizing the distant to manage YouTube on their Chromecasts. It’s exhausting to think about a software program answer to that drawback that wouldn’t allow, you already know, the very same logged-in expertise that individuals had entry to only a few weeks in the past earlier than it was eliminated.