How to Screencast Media with Your Android Phone

Android Smartphones For Dummies

When you desire to watch movies, look at your photos, or listen to music from your Android phone on a large-format screen, it’s time to screencast: This technology takes the image presented on your phone (or music playing) and casts it to an HDTV or monitor.

To successfully cast media, the HDTV or monitor must have a screencasting gizmo installed, such as Google’s Chromecast. After you set up that gizmo, the screencast works like this:

Open the app that plays the media you want to watch or listen to.

Compatible apps include Play Music, Play Movies & TV, YouTube, Netflix, and similar apps.
Ensure that the HDTV or monitor is set to the proper HDMI input.

For example, if a Chromecast dongle is installed on HDMI Input 4, switch the TV to that input. The casting dongle must be awake and active.
Tap the Chromecast icon.

The icon appears. If you don’t see this icon, the media cannot be cast to another device or the casting gizmo isn’t on (refer to Step 2).
Choose a screencasting device from the list.

The phone begins to send the media to the other device.

You can still use your phone while it’s casting. The app may offer you controls, such as Play and Pause, or it might display additional information about the media.

To end a screencasting session, tap the Chromecast icon again and tap the Disconnect button.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.