Netflix Won’t Let You Cast Shows From Your Phone to Your TV Anymore

Netflix has been updated Its service so that it no longer supports streaming video to a TV from a mobile device.

If you’re watching a show on your phone, you can no longer easily stream it to your TV and continue watching. Instead, Netflix prioritizes its TV app, which means you’ll need to grab your TV remote and use the app to play content, or even pause or rewind the show. Your mobile device will no longer be able to control the volume controls, play buttons, closed caption controls, or any other settings if you are streaming to your TV.

The change was first spotted and reported by Android Authority, and the news has drawn a lot of disdain from users in places like Reddit. This change eliminates the workaround that many people use either for their convenience, where they can browse Netflix on their phone, and then have something cast to their TV once they choose what they want to watch, or because the only account they have access to is authenticated on their phone, and they may not be able to sign in to the TV app.

“Why do they take away incredibly useful features? Why do they make the experience worse?” reads the top Reddit comment on the post sharing the Android Authority article.

A Netflix representative, answering WIRED’s questions via email, said Netflix would end support for mobile playback control because it wasn’t a feature used by enough members.

The representative says Netflix sometimes has to discontinue features that are no longer widely used so it can invest in those that provide more value. Netflix won’t share any information about how many people have used the casting feature, or what resources the feature consumes compared to anything else the platform offers.

Casting to TV will still work in a few cases. It doesn’t work at all with the cheaper ad-supported tiers offered by Netflix. But even if you pay for the more expensive streaming tier, streaming from your phone won’t work unless you’re streaming to an older device, like a pre-2020 Google Chromecast, which worked without a remote. But Google has discontinued its Chromecast, and the latest smart TVs usually come with apps like Netflix pre-installed.

Users are angry about this, noting that Netflix has shifted its priorities over the years from getting as many users as possible on its platform to maximizing subscription revenue by raising prices, cracking down on password sharing, and imposing restrictions on how the service can be accessed.