In an update on the company’s support pages, Google on Wednesday revealed it has identified the culprit behind slowed Wi-Fi performance with Chromecast built-in devices. An update should be available via Google Play on Thursday, January 18.
Earlier this week, a number of reports suggested Google’s “Cast” feature was slowing Wi-Fi connections to a crawl, essentially rendering some routers inoperable for a short period of time. Google confirmed this to be the case, summarizing the issue thusly:
In certain situations, a bug in the Cast software on Android phones may incorrectly send a large amount of network traffic which can slow down or temporarily impact Wi-Fi networks. The specific impact to the network will vary depending on the router.
According to Google, the problem only affects those with an Android phone and a Chromecast built-in device, such as a Chromecast or Google Home. Initially, people thought the problem only affected the Google Home Max, but it turns out all Google Home devices are temporarily incapacitating Wi-Fi networks.
Google makes no mention of iOS devices, so it would seem iPhone users are spared of the bug. For what it’s worth, I haven’t noticed any issues while using the iPhone X and Google Home Max in my apartment.
Although a fix is expected on January 18, Google said users can try rebooting their Android phone in the meantime.
