Send content to chromecast from native application

Question

Is it possible to send video to the chromecast device from a native application? It would be nice to share any window on a system instead of only chrome tabs. Also, is there any documentation of the communication used by chrome to communicate with the chromecast? It is my understanding that the chromecast essentially loads content from an embedded chrome instance, but there appears to be more direct ways of communicating with the device since it is able to stream content from a chrome tab using the extension.

Answer 1

You need to whitelist your receiver device if you are developing a receiver application. That would be a Chome app that runs on the receiver's Chrome instance.

You need to whitelist a sender url if you are developing a Chrome app that will cast it's contents.

Video casting works by sending a url to the receiver device, which the device will load directly.

Tab casting works by encoding the tab contents using WebM/Opus (in the Chrome cast extension) and streaming that to the receiver device. (This is limited to 720p, see this question)

Chrome apps can only use Video casting.

The chrome cast extension is going to be the only way to stream directly to the device.

So the answer to your question is no, you cannot stream video directly to the device. The receiver must load the video from the url you provide.

There is some speculation whether the receiver can be provided with a local url or if it must already be available on the internet. This has yet to be clarified.