Chromecast now lets your guest cast to your TV without signing onto your Wi-Fi

You got a friend over and they just discovered a really awesome video of a goat yelling on YouTube. You can crowd around their smartphone or you can ‘cast’ it to your Chromecast and watch screaming barn-yard animals in blazing HDTV glory.

Of course, this usually involves signing them onto your Wi-Fi network, which if you have a rather convoluted password, can be a pain. But, if your friend has an Android phone with 4.3 or later, you can set it up where they don’t even need to log into your Wi-Fi to share items on the big screen.

By setting your Chromecast into guest mode, you can allow anyone in the same room as your Chromecast to cast to the device without being on the same network. To enable Guest Mode, go to the Devices section on your Chromecast app. From there tap on Guest Mode and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can toggle the mode on or off.

In addition limiting the feature to Android 4.3 or later, the service also doesn’t work on iOS devices. So you’ll have to sign those folks onto your network or crowd around.

➤ How to set up guest mode [Google]