Some Chromecast devices have been rendered inoperable by a strange bug that appears to be stopping them from casting content to TVs as they should. The bug, which affects 2nd generation Chromecasts and Chromecast Audio devices only, has been causing problems for a couple of days now, and users are getting pretty worked up by the lack of a fix.
According to reports in Android Authority and 9to5Google, the bug causes one of two error messages to appear when users try to connect their device to their TV, and all they can do is dismiss those messages. There’s no way to make the devices work.
The most common message seen by users is this: "Untrusted device: [name] couldn't be verified. This could be caused by outdated device firmware." Alternatively, some users report seeing: "We couldn't authenticate your Chromecast."
In both cases, Google provides a link to its Chromecast support pages, but clicking through to them doesn’t provide any instructions on how to fix the issue.
As is often the case, irate Chromecast users have taken to Reddit to vent their fury at the problem, with numerous complaints of how Chromecasts are generally very buggy anyway. There’s lots of discussion about how some users have tried to fix it and failed, with some users even resorting to a factory reset, but Google is advising that users don’t try this, because it doesn’t work and will cause more problems when it does provide a fix.
Google was initially slow to respond, and some users speculated that the company was trying to retire their older devices without any warning, but that wasn’t the case. Finally, after about two days, a Google account on Reddit popped up and suggested that the issue is caused by a server-side problem, which means users have no way to fix it themselves. According to the Googler on Reddit, it has something to do with a security certificate that wasn’t renewed.
The account goes on to say that Google is currently working on a fix and hopes to provide it soon. While it gets that ready, users simply have to wait it out.
For those who have already tried a factory reset of their Chromecast, they’ll have to go through the whole process of setting it up again once the fix is provided. That is, unless they want to wait for Google to provide instructions on how to recover their now-reset device, which have been promised once the fix is out and confirmed to work.
