After almost 2 years of owning a Chromecast, it has become an established feature in our home. We’re using it to play Netflix, Youtube videos, display pictures and so on.

Recently we have been using it to play music. You just select some music videos on YouTube, add them to a playlist and play them on your Chromecast. The Chromecast is connected to the TV and the TV to the hi-fi audio system. So not only does the Chromecast change your TV to a connected TV. It also changes your hi-fi system to a connected hi-fi system.

However, we have a load of music on iTunes. Wouldn’t it be great to play that music through the Chromecast? Sure it would! And it would be easy… if iTunes was owned by Google :-) Unfortunatly, that’s not the case.

So let the geeks come in and fix that for you!

First thing you need to do, is download this Node.js module: https://www.npmjs.com/package/chromecast-osx-audio For a non-geek, it’s kinda hard, but I’ll try to make it easy. If you do not know what Node.js is, you probably won't have it on your Mac. So download and install it first: http://nodejs.org/

After installing it, open up a Terminal window. That’s the black thingy with the white borders. Now type:

sudo npm install -g chromecast-osx-audio

And enter your password.

After that, type:

chromecast

and watch the magic!

Your Chromecast should pop up and you’ll most likely hear yourself through the hi-fi system :-). To end this echoing witchcraft, hit

CTRL + C

So what this thing does, is, it takes your input audio (most likely your microphone) and streams it to your Chromecast. But, this is probably not what you want. You want your audio from your iTunes to be streamed to your Chromecast. To make this happen, there’s a tool out there called Soundflower. It‘s a like fake speaker that takes all your audio and passes it to a virtual input device (call it a fake microphone if you will). You get it? Let’s do it!

Download http://soundflower.en.softonic.com and install it. Next, go to your Mac OS X preferences and hit “Sound”. Click “output” and select “Soundflower (2ch)”. All your sound now goes into the magic box of Soundflower. It will stop coming out of your speakers.

Now click “input” and select “Soundflower (2ch)”. This is the “fake microphone” I was talking about. But instead of sound coming from a microphone, it will be sound coming from the magic Soundflower box, which is actually all the sound coming from your Mac.

No go back to that geeky Terminal window and type again:

chromecast

Now play something using iTunes (or any other music player), wait a few seconds. Tadaaa! There you have it. iTunes music playing through your Chromecast through your hi-fi system :-)

I know it’s little cumbersome, but it works.

Ps: Don’t forget to go back to your Sound preferences to change the output and input back to the original settings if you’re done. Or you will never here any sound again! Nooooo… :p