Cast Your Audio/Video to Your Google Cast or Sonos Devices

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Mkchromecast

This is a program to cast audio and video from your macOS, or Linux desktop to your Google Cast devices or Sonos speakers. It is written in Python, and it streams via node.js, ffmpeg, or avconv.

Mkchromecast is capable of using lossy and lossless audio formats provided that ffmpeg, avconv (Linux), or parec (Linux) are installed. It also supports Multi-room group playback, and 24-bits/96kHz high audio resolution. Linux users also can configure ALSA to capture audio.

Additionally, a system tray menu is available. More information here.

FAQ

For a list of frequently asked questions please visit the FAQ in the Wiki pages.

Contribute

If you want to contribute, help me improving this application by reporting issues, creating pull requests, or you may also buy me some pizza :).

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Download

Select the best option for you

macOS app Linux deb package Sources
Install

macOS app

Download the dmg, and drag Mkchromecast to your /Applications/ folder. Note that for the moments node is the only backend supported by default. This bundle contains support for casting to both Google Cast and Sonos. You also need to install Soundflower as instructed below. If you use homebrew, you can install Mkchromecast with one command line:

brew cask install mkchromecast

This will install the latest dmg and will install the Soundflower dependency.

Installing Soundflower (macOS users only)

For Soundflower you can check https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/ or if you have Homebrew you can use brew cask as follows:

brew cask install soundflower

Or just download the latest dmg file.

Linux based installation

Mkchromecast is available in the official Debian and Ubuntu repositories. You need to install it by executing:

sudo apt-get install mkchromecast

Alternatively, you can download the latest deb package here, and install it as follows:

sudo dpkg -i mkchromecast_$VERSION_all.deb

where $VERSION = X.Y.Z-Rev, e.g.: 0.2.6-1. Then, if the dependencies are not available you have to do:

sudo apt-get -f install

To pull the needed dependencies to cast using pulseaudio or ALSA, please install mkchromecast-pulseaudio or mkchromecast-alsa respectively.

This should work in Debian Unstable and Testing. If you find any problems, please report it here.`

Installing from Github

To install Mkchromecast, clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/muammar/mkchromecast.git

Or you may download one of the stable releases here, and unzip the file.

Python

To install the python requirements use the requirements.txt file shipped in this repository:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Note: if this step fails, maybe you need to run the installation with sudo as shown below. However, before installing using this method verify why a regular user cannot install the requirements.

sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

Linux users can try to install these python requirements using the package managers coming with their distributions.

Now you are good to go!. If you are interested in installing ffmpeg, please follow the instructions here.

Sonos support

If you are using Linux, and need Sonos suport, you need to install the soco module:

pip install soco

This will automatically add support to stream to Sonos speakers.

cast

Casting from system tray

macOS

Casting from console (Linux example)

Note: macOS users don’t need to select any sources. Soundflower manages this automatically.

Some other examples

If you have installed the debian package, then you just need to type mkchromecast in the console followed by the arguments shown below.

ffmpeg

Below an example using mp3 with ffmpeg:

python mkchromecast.py --encoder-backend ffmpeg

This is way more stable than the node implementation. With ffmpeg you can modify the codec:

python mkchromecast.py --encoder-backend ffmpeg -c aac

change the bitrate and sample rate:

python mkchromecast.py --encoder-backend ffmpeg -c mp3 -b 128 --sample-rate 31000

Playing source URLs in Google Cast devices

You can play any source URLs headlessly from the command line:

python mkchromecast.py --source-url SOURCE_URL

This option is useful for:

  1. Casting using MPD in the case you have already a http streaming source.
  2. Casting a radio station. A list of stations to try: https://ponyvillefm.com/servers

Example:

python mkchromecast.py --source-url http://192.99.131.205:8000/pvfm1.ogg -c ogg --volume

As it can be seen above, the codec has to be specified with the -c flag.

Note: .m3u or .pls are not yet supported.

Playing Youtube URLs in Google Cast devices

You can play Youtube URLs headlessly from the command line:

python mkchromecast.py -y https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=NVvAJhZVBT

To use this function, you need to install youtube-dl. In macOS, this can be done with homebrew: brew install youtube-dl. In Debian based distros: apt-get install youtube-dl.

Note: you may need to enclose the URL between quotation marks.

ALSA support

To cast using Linux with ALSA please check the wiki.

node

python mkchromecast.py

Change the bitrate and sample rate:

python mkchromecast.py -b 128 --sample-rate 31000

For more information:

python mkchromecast.py -h

Video

You can now cast videos to your Google cast using Mkchromecast. This feature is only working with ffmpeg backend and from command line. In the future, they may be a graphical interface for this process. See this project.

  • Cast a file from your computer to your chromecast:
python mkchromecast.py --video -i "/path/to/file.mp4"

Note: the format of the file can be whatever is supported by ffmpeg and not exclusively mp4.

  • Subtitles
python mkchromecast.py --video -i "/tmp/Homeland.S06E01.Fair.Game.1080p.AMZN.WEBRip.HEVC.DD5.1.x265.mkv" --subtitles /tmp/Homeland.S06E01.Fair\ Game.HDTV.x264-BATV.en.HI.srt
  • Set the resolution
python mkchromecast.py --video --resolution 4k -i /path/to/myvideo.something --subtitles /path/to/my.srt
  • Cast from a source url:
python mkchromecast.py --source-url http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4 -c mp4 --volume --video
  • Youtube Video
python mkchromecast.py -y https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=VuMBaAZn3II --video
updating

Updating

macOS app

Download latest dmg file here. Drag and replace the Mkchromecast app.

Linux based installation

In debian (and soon in ubuntu), you can update by doing:

  1. sudo apt-get update.
  2. sudo apt-get upgrade.

Alternatively, you can download the latest deb file here, and do a sudo dpkg -i mkchromecast_$VERSION_all.deb

From Github

So you’ve got a copy of Mkchromecast running and there’s some new update? Let’s update!

  1. Get into the Mkchromecast repository: cd /path/to/mkchromecast.
  2. Run git pull to update.
  3. git fetch -p to clean non existent remote branches.
  4. python mkchromecast.py -v to verify the new version.

Alternatively, you can update as follows:

  1. Get into the Mkchromecast repository: cd /path/to/mkchromecast.
  2. Run ` python mkchromecast.py –update `.

Mkchromecast — © 2017 Muammar El Khatib — site theme here.