Earlier this year, Google officially released Chromecast's software developer's kit (SDK), which we previously predicted would lead to a flood of apps supporting Google's $35 HDTV streaming dongle. Since then, Chromecast enthusiasts have searched through the deluge for the best Chromecast apps.

In AutoCast, we might have found the only Chromecast app you'll ever need.

There's one caveat to that statement: AutoCast is not a standalone app, but rather a plugin to the popular productivity app Tasker, which costs about $3 for full access. The AutoCast plugin is free to demo, but an additional $1.37 to fully unlock.

What do you get for that less than $5 investment? Pretty much anything you want to do on a Chromecast from your Android device, if you have the technical savvy to work with this highly detailed, open, but unembellished software platform.

AutoCast has any number of casting abilities. Many of AutoCast's features are covered by other apps, but no single app centralizes all the different media you can send to the Chromecast like this Tasker plugin. You can cast webpages, YouTube videos, images, audio, local media, documents, and more using AutoCast -- and you can cast them at the same time.

That means can multitask with several different casting media on your HDTV like a multi-screen command center, simply play a slideshow of images with a musical background, or dub in a commentary track to play in sync with your movie. AutoCast also opens up the cast-able sources of media far beyond almost any other Chromecast app, besides perhaps Plex. Cast video, images, or audio from the cloud like Dropbox, or media sites like Flickr or Vimeo, or completely customize the Chromecast homescreen with information from your Android smartphone like weather, calendars, and notifications.


Combining other Tasker plugins, also created by Latino developer João Dias, like AutoRemote, AutoVoice, and AutoPebble (for the Pebble smartwatch), you can interact with your Chromecast through voice commands, control other casting apps with your smartwatch, and pretty much put anything up on the big screen and interact with it.

"The possibilities are endless," says Dias in his intro video to AutoCast, and that's true, since this software basically lets you create any custom app for any purpose that will work with Chromecast. But as such, it's not fully formed as a user-friendly, point-and-shoot app, but rather an open platform.

It'll take some tinkering to fully exploit the Chromecast's abilities in the way you want with AutoCast, and so for new users, Dias provides a tutorial video for AutoCast, along with lots of other Tasker video tutorials.


When Google initially released the Chromecast, the possibilities for this flexible gadget seemed endless, until Google updated its firmware a month later and wiped out indie developers' projects for the remainder of 2013. But post-SDK software like AutoCast shows that Chromecast's initial prospect, as an open, revolutionary platform, is still alive and well.