Using a VPN on a Chromecast with Google TV

1. 1Confirm which Chromecast you haveOnly the models running Google TV, which have their own remote and app launcher, can run a VPN app. Older cast-only dongles cannot, and need the VPN on the router instead.
2. 2Free up space before installingOpen Settings, then System, then Storage, and clear room first. Installing onto a nearly full device is the usual cause of trouble later.
3. 3Install from the Play StoreGoogle Play is present, so a compatible client installs without enabling developer options or using a downloader utility.
4. 4Sign in and allow the VPN connectionOpen the app, sign in, and accept the system prompt. A key indicator appears while the tunnel is up.

The name covers two quite different products. The older dongles have no interface of their own and only receive casts from a phone, which means there is nowhere for a VPN app to run. The Google TV models have a remote, a launcher and the Play Store, and behave like any other Android TV device.

If yours has no remote, the only route is running the VPN on your router so the dongle is covered by the network rather than by an app.

The 4K model shipped with a famously small amount of usable space, and owners hit the ceiling faster than on almost any comparable device. Symptoms are indirect: updates fail, apps take an age to open, and playback stutters in a way that looks like a network problem and is not.

Before blaming the VPN for a slowdown on this device, check free space. It is the most likely explanation by a comfortable margin.

• Uninstall anything preinstalled that you do not actually watch.
• Clear the cache on your most-used app, then restart the device.
• Reassess after a restart rather than immediately, since space reclaimed is not always reflected straight away.

The 4K model’s power adapter includes a network socket, so wiring it is possible without extra hardware. The HD model’s does not, leaving wireless as the only option unless you add a powered adapter.

Given how sensitive a small dongle behind a television is to signal, a wired connection is worth the cable where the option exists.

A tunnel changes the address a service sees and hides the traffic from whoever carries it. It does not make you anonymous to a platform you have signed into, and on a device built around one account that distinction is worth stating rather than glossing.

What you gain here is that your internet provider stops being able to build a record of which services this household streams and when. What you do not gain is anonymity from the service itself. Both things are true at once, and only one of them gets advertised.

Casting from a phone relies on both devices discovering each other on the same local network, and a VPN on the phone can interrupt that discovery. If casting stops working after you connect on the phone, that is the cause rather than a fault on the Chromecast.

Excluding the casting app from the tunnel with split tunneling resolves it, and leaves everything else protected.

Most problems on a TV device turn out to be the device rather than the tunnel. Why streams buffer works through the causes in the order they are actually likely, and the features page covers split tunneling and the system kill switch.

For the app itself, the download page carries the current version and the Downloader code, and the Fire Stick and Android TV guide is the longer walkthrough that covers every device in this family.