According to Esper’s Mishaal Rahman, Google may soon begin to allow you to select from cast devices when using the audio output switcher on Android 13. With Android 11, the output switcher lets you switch between media playback sessions on paired Bluetooth devices, like headphones or a speaker.
Cast devices will appear in the Android 13 audio output switcher
However, a Google Cast SDK (software development kit) update suggests that the output switcher in Android 13 may support local-to-remote, remote-to-local, and remote-to-remote transfers. Rahman pointed out that “local” transfers use Bluetooth devices that are already paired, while “remote” transfers use cast devices. Using the audio output switcher on your lock screen, you should be able to seamlessly transfer media sessions from your phone to a smart display and back again.
A demo posted by Rahman shows how this might look, as well as an upcoming “stream expansion” feature that allows you to enable audio playback across multiple cast devices at the same time. Rahman found some bugs when he was testing the features, so it doesn’t look like it’s ready yet.
Google was working on adding support for cast devices in the output switcher in 2020, but it was never completed for whatever reason. But now that Google has explained the feature in documents for developers, it looks like it will be added in a future update.
