I’m a bit spun out here. I was exploring the Brave interface (something I’ve never really done before) and I click the music icon, “Control your music, videos and more”
What I saw is screenshotted, Prime Video (a product I’ve never used), a play scale that is unfunctional and an Android TV, and, nerve wrackingly, a button that says “stop casting”, i.e. I’m already casting something.
That Android TV is probably one of my housemates.
I click Stop casting and the whole panel closes. But when I click the music icon again I get the same thing, Prime Video, Stop Casting. What is going on here?
I turned on Network Sharing and there is indeed an Android TV on my network. Is this a very disturbing visual bug or have I indeed been casting something to a mystery televsion on essentially a public network, potentially since I installed brave a year ago?
If this is a bug you need to fix this, especially as Brave is marketed towards the privacy focused. This is more than enough to make me uninstall. Install a privacy browser and it starts streaming everything to a random housemate’s televesion (until someone tells me otherwise).
Whats happening, is that the Android TV is casting - your friend is watching it and it’s appearing on your Brave media player because it’s being shared. The reason it keeps coming back is because when you click ‘stop casting’ they are re-casting it again.
You are not casting anything unless you click the cast button and others will be able to see what is being cast unless you turn it off. You have to go in the Google home app, devices, recognition and sharing, under ‘Let others control your cast media’ to never. You must do that for all devices you don’t want to share or be controlled.
If you were casting it would tell you where you are casting and you would have full control over you media on the Brave media player. Play, Pause, Rewind, etc.
All this is a default Google setting. Also on the Brave media player you can right-click to turn off and on ‘show other cast sessions’.
Thanks for this, my mind has been racing a bit thinking I might have been streaming my emails with my doctor to my housemate’s widescreen. I think the UX needs to be changed it’s very alarming to see a list of devices and, in red, “stop streaming”, which very heavily implies that I am streaming. It should say, “stop receiving stream” or something
I’ll tell my housemate to change the security settings on his TV to keep his privacy.
Is this a glitch then? Because I can’t actually see or control his TV, I can just see when his TV is streaming amazon prime which feels like his TV is leaking information
Yeah I can see how that can be scary but don’t worry you aren’t casting anything. If you were you have to choose where you want to cast which will alert you. It only cast media e.g. YouTube or any other steaming media. No email or websites.
The reason why you are seeing it is because you’re on the same network (WiFi) and it’s being shared by default, it’s not a glitch it’s a choice Google made. So if it’s you and your roommate, only you two can see each others cast. If there are others using your network right now they can see it. You can’t control it from your web browser unless you’re the one casting it but maybe might be able to control it from the Home app.
It’s there (I think) because Google want to show that the TV is in use, they are watching something so don’t disturb them or they left it on and you can turn it off - something like that.
See if you can pause it with your phone through the Google Home app. That would confirm that Brave has no access to control other people media but the Home app does.
@henners to be clear, it would not be casting from your device/browser unless it was turned on from there. What you are seeing is that one of the devices on the network you can cast to is in use. For example, I just chose to cast to my TV using Chrome:
So what you’re showing is that your roommate or someone was casting to Android TV using Prime Video.
Anyone on the same Wi-Fi will have the option to stop casting. It’s doing that as it’s assuming it’s the same person or family.
So in short, what you’re showing is not that your browser or device is casting, but that someone else on your Wi-Fi network is casting. And the only thing being cast is some content from Prime Video
If you even go to Brave and cast something like a video from YouTube to the Android TV, it’s going to default to Cast Tab which just will send the video to the YouTube app on the Android TV most likely. In this scenario, you’re probably going to end up seeing ads and all. But main concept is anything else you do on your device won’t go up there, only YouTube videos you click on.
If you do the dropdown box and choose Cast Screen instead, then you can mirror everything you see on your screen to the Android TV. In doing this, you get the benefit of adblocker for the videos up there.
Other big thing to note:
If you’re casting, it will always be blue to show it’s active. And it will show the cast button on your bar.
I have enabled the cast button to remain at all times, so it won’t hide. But when I stop casting, it’s no longer blue:
So that’s a good thing to realize and is a way to differentiate if the origin is your own device
.
on your bar.
