When you use your Chromecast for YouTube videos, there’s an annoying feature where suggested videos continuously queue up whether you want them or not. Here’s now to turn that feature off.
What’s the Deal?
YouTube likes to automatically play suggested videos after your current video is over. This is pretty easy to turn off on the desktop and mobile apps, but the setting is a bit more hidden when it comes to the Chromecast. Yes, it’s a completely different toggle, and if you don’t turn it off, your Chromecast will continuously queue videos for the next four hours unless you interrupt it. For some, that’s merely annoying; for those with limited bandwidth, it’s potentially very costly, especially if you don’t realize it’s still playing after you turn off the TV.
Let’s put an end to that nonsense, right now.
How to Turn Off Autoplay on the Chromecast
In a perfect world, turning off autoplay in your mobile app would also turn it off for the Chromecast. But it doesn’t, and there isn’t even an obvious toggle for it in the settings. The only way to turn it off is to look in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
First, launch the YouTube application while connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Chromecast. Second, tap the Chromecast icon in the app’s navigation bar.
Select any one of your Chromecasts. Which one doesn’t matter, as the setting is app-based and not specific to the individual Chromecast unit.
Once you make your selection, you’ll see a little note at the bottom of the screen indicating that you’re connected to the Chromecast, but that there are no videos in the queue.
Make note of that location on the screen, but don’t get too excited yet. Tap any YouTube video on the main screen and then select “Queue” to add it to your queue of casted YouTube videos. You must queue a video for this to work, but you only have to queue one.
At the bottom of the screen you’ll see another pop-up notification that the video has been added to your queue. Tap on it.
Here, located in a spot you wouldn’t even notice unless you were actively queuing items, is the autoplay toggle for the Chromecast stream. Toggle “Autoplay” to off.
Now, after turning off Autoplay, repeat the process on all the devices in your household that cast YouTube videos to your Chromecast. As we mentioned above, the setting is not flagged on the Chromecast itself–it’s specific to each phone and tablet. But once you toggle it off in the YouTube app, the autoplay function is turned off for all Chromecasts you connect to, so at least that’s nice.
With that inconvenience out of the way, you no longer have to worry about your Chromecast aimlessly meandering through hours and hours of suggested videos long after you’ve left the room.