Turn on your TV You can use a Chromecast to power on your television, so long as it has support for HDMI-CEC.

While it may not seem feature-packed on the surface, there are a lot of things a Chromecast can do that arent immediately apparent.

Below you will find 20 tips and tricks to help you get a better understanding of the Chromecast platform.

Chromecast For A Download The Google

If you want to use your own photos, download the Google Home app to your Android or iOS device, tap your Chromecast from the list of your devices on the Home tab and tap the gear icon to open settings.

In Device settings, tap Ambient Mode and select Google Photos and then select a slideshow to display.

You also have the option to tweak the speed at which new photos show, from 5 seconds to 10 minutes, and you choose to display other information on the screen including the current weather and time.

Browse Chromecast-compatible apps You know the standard apps that support Chromecast -- YouTube, Netflix, Pandora, etc.

But what else can you stream to your TV To find out, all you have to do is open the Google Home app on your phone and select the Discover tab.

Scroll down the feed and youll see items for Chromecast - Sports, Chromecast - News and Chromecast Audio - Music.

Chromecast For A Install Any Chromecast

You can swipe through these to install any Chromecast-compatible app that you want to add.

Mirror Android devices The Chromecasts highlight feature is streaming video from YouTube, Netflix and any other application that supports it.

However, if youre an Android user, you can mirror your device display to any TV.

Select which Chromecast you want to use, and your entire screen will be streamed to the television.

Casting features are now baked into Chrome itself, so you no longer need the Chromecast extension.

To mirror your entire computer desktop on a TV via Chromecast, open Chrome and click the Cast button to the right of the URL bar and select your device to begin mirroring.

Stream local content Since mirroring your desktop generally has a pretty terrible frame rate, you will need to use a different method to stream local videos and content to your Chromecast from a desktop.

On a Mac, just drag a video file into a Chrome tab or press Command O and locate a video.

From within Chrome on Windows, go to File Open or press Ctrl O and locate a video file to open it in Chrome.

This does tend to drop frames from time to time and audio can sometimes get out of sync with the video, but shy of using a third-party solution that costs money or uploading everything to a private YouTube channel, this is the easiest way to stream your local videos or pictures via Chromecast.

Power it using your TV.maybe If you have a TV made in the last 10 years or so, it likely has a USB port around back.

Since the Chromecast is powered via USB, you can simply plug this cable into the open USB port on your television instead of needing to run its power cord to an outlet.

In most cases, this USB port will be sufficient for powering your Chromecast.

Chromecast For A Mac