Chromecast with Google TV owners just got a great free upgrade

Android 12 brings useful new features to Google's best streaming stick

Chromecast with Google TV
(Image credit: Google)

If you like Google's way of doing things, the Google Chromecast with Google TV is one of the best media streamers you can buy – and it's just become even better with a free update that takes its Android version from Android 10 to Android 12. 

The update has already rolled out to the non-4K version of Google's TV dongle, and now it's made its way to the 4K model too. And it's an upgrade well worth having. 

What's new in the Google Chromecast with Google TV update?

The update, which is rolling out now, gives you additional settings for HDR formats and surround sound and a  new text scaling option for on-screen text. There's a new Match Content Frame Rate feature, which enables you to switch between refresh rates and can help eliminate the on-screen judder that sometimes occurs when there's a frame rate mismatch, and there are new privacy toggles for the mic and camera that enable you to allow or block them across all your TV apps.

As with other updates you're also getting a bunch of bug fixes and OS tweaks, and the security patch level is now the July 2022 one. 

Updating your Chromecast couldn't be simpler. Go to your profile and select Settings > System > About > System Update and the Chromecast will take care of the rest. The update is 722MB.

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series. When she’s not scribbling, she’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR (havrmusic.com).