Browser Compatibility

When you're using Cast, your web browser is an integral part of your podcasting process. For this reason, ensuring that you're running a compatible web browser (and a compatible version of that web browser) is extremely important.

What Do I Need To Know?

Cast is currently compatible with the stable, current version of the Google Chrome browser, which is free to download, and is availble for both Windows and macOS. Google updates Chrome on a very regular cadence, and we advise making sure your computer is running the latest release.

Google also keeps a public schedule for their upcoming Chrome releases, which is a good reference to see what the current, upcoming, and recent versions of Chrome are.

Why Does It Matter if My Version of Chrome is Too Old?

Cast relies on a number of extremely new technologies to function, and these technologies are used by Cast to — among other things — make live voice calls and record and edit audio in your web browser. The newness of these technologies means that sometimes browser makers change how they work over time, and sometimes introduce new technolgies that didn't exist in the older versions of their web browsers.

As a result, we're forced to drop support over time for versions of Chrome that are extremely out of date. In many cases, the underlying technologies that Cast uses are simply not compatible with the out of date versions used in older versions of Google Chrome.

Cast will refuse to run on a version of Chrome that is no longer supported, and if we notice your version of Chrome is starting to get out of date, we'll try to warn you about that too so you can make sure you stay up to date.

Why Does It Matter if My Version of Chrome is Beta or Canary?

Google regularly releases test versions of the Chrome browser, which they call the Beta and Canary version, depending on how far ahead of the current version those test versions are. We're extremely grateful for any users who are running these versions of Chrome who wish to report any issues they run into with Cast, and we work to fix those issues as quickly as we can.

That said, these test versions of Chrome are, by their nature, so new that they may themselves have compatibility problems with the technologies that Cast uses. Further to that, they often contain bugs that Google hopes to fix by the time that versions is released as Chrome's latest stable version.

This is all to say: if you're using a Beta or Canary build of Google Chrome, you're welcome to use it with Cast, but please be aware that you may run into a few problems along the way. If you do, we'd love to hear about them.

More Questions

What About Chrome on Linux?

Cast currently supports Chrome on Linux in Beta; our testing appears to show that Cast works well in Chrome for Linux, however we don't yet have enough data to say definitively that you won't run into issues. As a result, please be aware that issues might crop up if you choose to run Cast in Chrome on Linux.

We're actively gathering data on Cast's Linux compatibility, and we appreciate any reports from users who are using Cast on Linux. This Beta feature is automatically enabled for all of Cast users, but we'd be grateful to receive any reports about successes or problems using Cast in Chrome for Linux.

Why Doesn't Cast Support This Other Browser That I Love?

The nature of Cast's software means that it has to integrate tightly with your web browser in order to work properly. Some web browsers don't support important technologies that Cast needs to function, while others claim to support the technology but our evaluation shows that support is incomplete or incompatible with how Cast needs to use it.

We're continuously evaluating the web browser landscape, and regularly evalute all sorts of web browsers for their possible future compatiblity with Cast. At this time, however, we've determined that the best way for us to provide a great and reliable experience for our users is to restrict compatibility to Google Chrome.