While you may not have an immediate need or a burning desire to stream your social media feeds to the big screen, it is possible with apps like Google+. Today, Facebook has just started adding Chromecast support to their application, making it possible to stream your news feed to the TV or monitor that you’re Chromecast is plugged into. What’s more, is that it really doesn’t need to be a Chromecast that you’re streaming to, so long as you have a Google Cast enabled device. Google Cast is the technology behind the Chromecast that makes the streaming possible, and it’s a technology that many newer TVs that were launched this year have baked right in.
If you’re reading this and are excited about the prospect of viewing your feed on a much larger display, there are a couple of important details that need to be highlighted. The first is that you can’t actually stream from an Android version of the app just yet, as Facebook says that Android app support for this feature is due to hit “in the coming weeks.” This doesn’t give an exact time frame of when to expect it, but it’s entirely possible that it will be launching either at the end of this month or in the beginning of next month.
With that out of the way, you can stream Facebook through two other methods as of today, which is through the web version of the service on desktop, or through the iOS app. While users may not care to read their news feeds up on a TV sized screen, the new Google Cast support does make for a very useful functionality if you’re watching a video on Facebook and want to watch it on a larger display. Google Cast support is what makes the YouTube app such a great offering now as you can simply throw the video upon the big screen and it’s instantly more enjoyable, and now Facebook will be offering the same thing. This is all the more useful as some videos are only available through Facebook, or it may simply be challenging to find the video on another platform if you aren’t sure what to search for. With Google Cast support, that will no longer matter.