CastHero logo: a masked hero beside a television screen

CastHero

Cast to TV

CastHero for Android TV and Fire TV

A casting helper for your television. Your own photos, videos and music, from your phone to the big screen.

Where to get it

Live On Google Play for Android TV and Google TV. The Amazon Appstore listing for Fire TV is being prepared.

Install it on the television itself from the Play Store app on the TV, or open the listing on your phone and choose the TV as the device to install to.

Google Play for Android TV and Google TV Amazon Appstore for Fire TV, coming soon

Want a note when the Fire TV listing opens? Write to castheroapp@gmail.com.

Coming Both listings are still being prepared.

The app is built and tested on real hardware, and neither store listing is up yet, so neither button installs anything today. The buttons are here so the addresses are on the record, not because there is something to download.

Google Play listing coming soon Amazon Appstore coming soon

The Google Play address is the one this app will be published at. Follow it before publication and Google will say the page was not found. The Amazon address is not assigned until the listing exists, so that button goes nowhere at all.

Want a note when they open? Write to castheroapp@gmail.com.

What it does

This is the store description, word for word, so that the page you are reading and the listing you came from say exactly the same thing.

The store description, unedited

CastHero turns your television into a receiver for the photos, videos and music you already have. Send them from your phone or computer over your home Wi-Fi and they play on the big screen within seconds. There is no account to create, no pairing code, no sign-in, and nothing to set up on the TV.

What it is

CastHero is a casting helper: a tool that connects your phone to your television and shows your own media there. The app contains no video, audio or image material of its own. Everything that appears on the screen is something you chose and sent from your own device.

What you can send

  • Photos: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and HEIC, shown full screen.
  • Videos: MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM and AVI files.
  • Music: MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV and Opus, with the album artwork on screen.

Albums

Send a whole list of photos, videos and songs and CastHero plays them back to back, like a photo album on the big screen. Choose fade, slide or zoom transitions and how long each photo stays, or set the timing to zero and move through the album yourself with the remote. A holiday, a birthday, a year of pictures: the moments you already have, at the size they deserve.

A player made for the remote

The title, the time played and the time remaining are one press away. The arrows skip 15 seconds, and 30, 45 and 60 when you keep pressing; hold one down to scrub. Play pauses and resumes. In an album, left and right move between items. Back returns to the home screen.

Recent

Links you have cast from the internet stay in a Recent row on the home screen, so the same thing is one press away next time. The row lives on the TV, it never includes anything served from a device on your own network, and you can clear it whenever you like.

How it works

  1. Open CastHero on your TV. It receives while its screen is on, so open it before you cast. The home screen shows the TV’s name and address.
  2. On a phone or computer on the same Wi-Fi, open the CastHero app or the web caster at casthero.app.
  3. Choose this TV and press Cast.

Works with

Android TV and Google TV sets and streaming boxes. The same phone, computer or web caster reaches every television CastHero runs on; see casthero.app for the other platforms.

Private by design

CastHero has no account and no sign-in, shows no ads, sells nothing and collects nothing. There is no tracking and no analytics. Your media plays straight from your own device to your TV over your own network and is never uploaded anywhere. The Recent row is the only thing the app keeps, and it keeps it on the TV.

Free, with no ads and no in-app purchases. Visit casthero.app for the apps and tools that send media to CastHero.

Playback depends on the decoders built into your TV or streaming box. Some formats and codecs are not available on every device, and protected or DRM-locked files cannot be played. When something cannot be played, CastHero says so on screen instead of failing quietly.

Sample media

The screenshots and the in-app demo use openly licensed sample media: Big Buck Bunny and Sintel by the Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0; SoundHelix Song 1 by T. Schürger, from soundhelix.com; and photographs from Unsplash. Full credits are at casthero.app/android-tv.

Android TV and Google TV are trademarks of Google LLC. CastHero is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Google.

What it looks like on the TV

Captured on a 4K Android TV set. Every frame is the app’s own interface showing sample media CastHero is licensed to display; see the credit at the foot of this page.

The CastHero home screen on the television: the app name, a sentence explaining that the TV is now a receiver, four rows describing what can be sent (video, photos, music and albums), a Recent row with tiles for a song, a video and a five-picture album, a History and a Restart receiver button, and on the right a QR code for casthero.app above this TV’s network address.
The home screen, with this TV’s address, what it can show, and the things you have sent to it recently.
A video playing full screen on the television, with its title in the top left corner and the player controls along the bottom: a pause symbol, a progress bar, four seconds played on the left and six seconds remaining on the right.
A video, with the title, the time played and the time remaining one press of OK away.
A photograph of a red sandstone gorge at sunset filling the television screen, with the caption bar along the bottom: the photo's title on the left and its position, 2 of 4, on the right.
An album on the big screen: each photo’s title on the left, its place in the album on the right.
The music screen: a square piece of album artwork showing a waterfall on the left, the track title and the artist beside it on the right, and a progress bar along the bottom of the screen.
Music, with the album artwork, the artist and the same remote-friendly progress bar.
A placeholder card reading "Image could not be loaded" in the middle of the screen, with a line underneath naming the photo formats the app can show, and the caption bar saying the photo's title followed by "(image could not be loaded)" at position 2 of 3.
A photo that will not load keeps its place in the album and says so, rather than ending it.
A dark red screen reading "Playback error", with the technical reason and the full web address that failed underneath it, and a line at the bottom saying to press BACK or OK to return to the home screen.
When something cannot be played, the TV says what went wrong and what it tried to open.

How to cast to it

Three steps, once. Everything happens on your own Wi‑Fi.

  1. Install it on the TV

    From the store on the television itself, or from the store on your phone. There is nothing to sign in to and nothing to configure.

    Neither listing is open yet, so this step is the one you cannot do today.

  2. Open it on the TV

    The home screen shows this television’s name and its address on your network, so you know which TV you are about to send something to.

    Leave it there. CastHero receives while its screen is on the TV, and pressing BACK on the home screen closes it, so open it first and then cast.

  3. Send something to it

    From a phone or a computer on the same Wi‑Fi, choose the television and press Cast.

    The CastHero phone app is still in development. The web caster for Android TV and Fire TV works today in Chrome on a computer or a phone.

What it plays

The same list the store listing gives, because it is the same app.

Photos

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and HEIC

Shown full screen.

Videos

MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM and AVI

Files from your phone or computer.

Music

MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV and Opus

With the album artwork on screen.

Playback depends on the decoders built into your TV or streaming box. Some formats and codecs are not available on every device, and protected or DRM‑locked files cannot be played. When something cannot be played, CastHero says so on screen instead of failing quietly.

Privacy

There is no account and no sign-in, and the app collects nothing: no analytics, no advertising identifiers, no crash reporting, and no server to send any of it to.

Your media is never uploaded anywhere. The television fetches it from the address your own phone or computer gave it, over your own network.

The Recent row is the only thing the app keeps, it is kept on the television, and you can clear it from the home screen whenever you like. The full privacy policy covers all of this in detail.

Sample content

Sample media shown in the screenshots and in the app’s demo is used for demonstration only. The video clips are from the Blender Foundation open movies Big Buck Bunny and Sintel, © Blender Foundation, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. The sample song is SoundHelix Song 1 by T. Schürger, from soundhelix.com, used under the permission SoundHelix grants for its audio examples, which asks for credit to SoundHelix and the artist. The sample photographs are from Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License, by Oleksii Topolianskyi, Philippe Wuyts, Andrew Ridley, Matthew Henry and Jared Erondu. None of these creators endorse CastHero.