The media player baked into the notification shade on recent Android versions has made it easy to manage your music playback from a single place. While Android 12 allowed you to easily switch between your phone’s speaker and any connected Bluetooth headphones, Android 13’s quick output switcher packs a lot of other capabilities. With a new YouTube and YouTube Music update, you can now seamlessly move your media to a cast device from the same output switcher shortcut.

It’s been a long-standing demand of Android users to have an easy way to switch between their connected Google Cast speakers and screens when playing media. The feature was supposed to arrive with Android 11, but it finally landed with this year’s Android 13 update. However, it's been up to individual apps to add the new cast options in the output switcher. While some apps have supported it for a while, Google’s own streaming apps are among the first mainstream services to add the nifty little feature.

A handful of users started seeing their cast devices in the output switcher list when playing media from YouTube and YouTube Music (via Esper’s Mishaal Rahman). As you can see in the screenshots shared by these users, your compatible TVs, Nest Hub screens, and Home speakers will now show up on the list alongside your Bluetooth headphones and speakers.

Rahman spotted the feature for the first time in October and gave us a short demo of how it’s supposed to work. In the video below, you can see that it is pretty easy and seamless to jump between your cast devices, which would’ve otherwise required you to open the media app. Adjusting the volume of your connected smart speaker is also possible from the same window.

It’s worth noting that Stream Expansion, which lets you cast to multiple devices from the output switcher, doesn’t appear to be a part of the current rollout. You don’t necessarily need a Pixel phone to get this feature — any one of the top Android handsets running the latest Android 13 will do the trick. Some Samsung Galaxy S22 owners have seen the option, along with a few Pixel users. However, the rollout appears to be server-side and slow, as we're yet to see these new casting options on our own devices.

Output Switcher with cast targets on, left: Pixel, right: Samsung

To check if you have the updated output switcher, play something on YouTube or YouTube Music and leave the app. From Android 13’s media player in the notification shade, open the output switcher. You should see your compatible cast devices on the local network here. If you don’t, you will have to wait a while longer for it to reach your device.