Cast YouTube from Your Phone to Your PC: A Comprehensive Guide to Enhance Your Viewing Experience

If your media streaming device, such as a TV, gaming console, Roku stick, or other device, is on the same Wi-Fi network as your phone, a “Cast” icon will appear on your phone’s YouTube app, allowing you to instantly stream content to the device.

Previously, it was possible to cast YouTube from your phone to browsers such as Google Chrome, Edge, or Firefox on your PC. However, this feature was discontinued a few years ago, leaving many users frustrated. Fortunately, with a simple setup, you can enable a special build of Chrome (or Edge) on your PC that will allow you to cast YouTube and other websites from your iOS or Android phone to your computer for a seamless viewing experience.”

Setting Up Custom UserAgent String

To start, install the Custom UserAgent String extension for Chrome on your PC. This extension allows you to alter the Chrome version on your computer to mimic that of smart TVs, streaming sticks, gaming consoles, or other devices. You can configure the extension to only affect specific websites, in this case, the YouTube site designed for casting requests.

After installation, the extension should appear as a blue globe icon in the Chrome extensions bar. If not, navigate to the Chrome menu icon, select “More tools,” then “Extensions.” Locate the UserAgent extension, and activate it by clicking the icon until it turns blue.

Next, click the UserAgent extension icon, then “Open Options Page.”

In the “Enter a desired URL” box, enter https://youtube.com/tv.

Then, in the big box next to that, enter:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Tizen 2.3) AppleWebKit/538.1 (KHTML, like Gecko)Version/2.3 TV Safari/538.1

By using this extension, you ensure that whenever you visit youtube.com/tv, Chrome will mimic the behavior of the Samsung TV app and be ready for casting.

Once you have filled in both boxes, click the “+” icon on the right to confirm the custom user agent string.

Connecting Your Phone and PC

In Chrome, navigate to youtube.com/tv. You may see a prompt to sign in with a web browser, but you can disregard this step as it will be performed automatically in the next step. Instead, click the Settings icon located in the bottom left corner of the YouTube.com/TV page.

Next, choose “Link with TV Code.” Leave the page displaying the TV code open while you do the next step.

On the YouTube app on your phone, click your profile icon at the top right corner, then Settings -> Watch on TV -> Enter TV Code.

Enter the code displayed in the browser on your PC, then tap “Link.”

Now, when you tap the “Cast” icon in the top of the YouTube app on your phone, your PC should appear as a device to stream to, typically labeled as “YouTube on TV.” Simply select your device and you are ready to go!

If the process is not successful, the issue could be either a lack of casting compatibility on your mobile device or PC or an error in the custom user agent string. Some comments on this article have indicated that the custom user agent string may not work, but we have recently retried it and can confirm that it still functions correctly for us!


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