Did you recognize the YouTube app in your older Chromecast has a hidden distant management that permits you to floor a whole YouTube app which you could scroll?

You simply want to begin casting one thing to your TV within the YouTube app with the Cast button up prime — then hit the Cast button a second time to entry a menu the place you’ll discover a button labeled Remote. Then, you get a full D-pad to maneuver round, a voice search button, and the all-important Back button you’ll have to again out of that video and entry a full YouTube interface.

Originally, the Google Chromecast HDMI dongle required you to regulate it largely out of your cellphone, “casting” each video you needed to look at to your TV display as an alternative of looking — till the 2020 Chromecast with Google TV added its personal bodily distant.

But apparently, that modified. Chrome Unboxed reported in February that the YouTube app on Chromecast had added a looking expertise with the hidden distant, and websites like 9to5Google and Android Police at the moment are reporting that it’s broadly rolling out to older dongles just like the third-gen Chromecast and Chromecast Ultra. That’s a pleasant bonus when you just lately nabbed the Ultra for $22.22 within the Stadia sale.

I can’t affirm when it rolled out, however I do see that Google’s support page has officially added instructions for using the remote, one thing that the Wayback Machine tells me wasn’t but there again on, say, October 5th, and the corporate tweeted about the feature yesterday.

The cellphone distant is somewhat laggy in comparison with utilizing a devoted distant and even utilizing an iPhone to regulate an Apple TV, however it works effective up to now on my Chromecast Ultra. I’d most likely use it so much if I valued YouTube’s suggestions extra. (I don’t perceive why it retains recommending movies I’ve already watched and ones from a few years in the past.) I want it had been obtainable in Netflix, the place I do are inclined to scroll so much, however I didn’t see the choice there.