Chromecast is the surprise hit that Google delivered over a year ago. So far it has sold millions of these little HDMI dongles, allowing users to add “smart” features to their televisions as long as they have an HDMI port. It was confirmed at the Google I/O 2015 event earlier this week that several new features will be added to Chromecast now that Google has opened them up to developers, who can then integrate those features into their applications.
Google has opened up Autoplay and Queuing APIs to developers, this will allow them to enable their applications to start buffering a second video while the first one is finishing playback.
This enables the app to provide a continuous playback experience and also increases watch time, expect this feature to be supported by various online content streaming services that have an app for Chromecast.
Google has also made it easier for developers to build multiplayer games for Chromecast, which can then be played by all connected clients regardless of whether they’re on Android or iOS.
The company announced that it was opening up all of these features to Chromecast app developers at I/O 2015. It will obviously take some time before developers get the hang of these new APIs and bring this functionality to their apps for Chromecast.
Filed in . Read more about Chromecast, Google and Google I/o 2015.