LocalCast: stream to TV Reviews

by Markos19105908

I’ve owned this for a few years hoping some day that the issues would be solved. The screen mirroring doesn’t work...this is the main reason I purchased LocalCast. The local storage casting doesn’t work for most video formats.

by LPC1

Under the tab "DNLA/Upnp" your app used to connect fine to my "WDMyCloud" drive it used to work great until you redesigned the look awhile back and broke something. Now under "DNLA/Upnp" it still sees my WDMyCloud drive and it shows icons of content including all the photos, videos & music on my drive. BUT it will NOT play anything anymore. When a video or music or photo there is clicked now it says "NOT connected, touch the amber button in the lower right to connect." So then I do that and it just forever reads "Scanning network for devices...". It stays stuck there forever & thus is not working now. It used to work fine & was great until the latest recent updates, (thank goodness your Apple TV app still works). The new iPhone app design looks very nice but since it broke LocalCast from playing anything that it still sees and shows on my drive but will not play any of it then what's the point of having it if it shows the contents but won't play any of it anymore now. (Maybe go back to the simpler design at least it worked then.) Please fix ASAP and then I will reconsider the review, thanks.

by Hey_Andre

Two issues with LocalCast :

1) description says LocalCast is free but the cost is $3.99 and a pro version is IAP for $0.00. So basically you have to buy LocalCast to test it even though developer says it’s “free and fully functional” in LocalCast description.
2) LocalCast has all sorts of issues. Confusing and hard to figure out. If not giving access to all pics but only select - it does not populate and doesn’t show any files even though I’ve selected several. Had to redownload just to give access to all pics/videos. Then all populated. However, when streaming a video it loops the same video over and over even though I’m selecting different videos to play. I had to restart LocalCast just to play a different video and it happens every time. Developer claims you can play video files in only a couple of formats which is ok but there are zero instructions on how to play video files that are not in your camera roll. I would delete LocalCast in a heart beat but man, having spent $4 just to see how raw and lousy LocalCast is made just breaks my heart.

by Bhatch21

Tried playing a movie out of my personal library and either it paused or crashed every few minutes. After restarting the movie multiple times and getting frustrated I just downloaded another app that worked a million times better; and the other app had 10x faster optimization of the video. Not being able to modify your queue is not good

by Zimm1420

You need to have downloaded content on your device, I wanted to cast to tv and listen through headphones,this will do this but not while streaming through an app like Netflix. (I thought web video would allow Netflix) There was no free version thus the 1 star review since I wasted my money and a trial would have told me this was not going to solve my issue, I wish I could return LocalCast ….I was going to change my review since streaming from Dropbox could be useful, but it does not support mp4 format, also tried web video that also did not work….

by Darkwinger12

I bought it with the intent to cast shows and movies from my google drive and desktop onto my tv and it can’t even do that. It just makes the screen go black for like a second then shows the cast logo

by Lisa Lê 261070

I have LocalCast and I connected to my Dropbox and I clicked on when the MP4 videos it’s Says file type not supported on the MP4 videos and the MP3 music‘s LocalCast is really bad app do not get LocalCast it’s a really crappy app get like a better one and do not get any of the Apps that you need to buy that can support dropbox and do not get allcast because it only gives you a watching time limit for each video

by Pier3285

After paying for LocalCast I discovered that it will not cast photos from Dropbox. It can open Dropbox and access the photos but will not cast them. The error message is “file type not supported” even though many of the photos are .jpg. I am using it on my apple 10 iPhone and my up to date apple iPads. LocalCast has not been updated in 11 months even though apple has made several os changes in that period of time.

by Alaric S

I was looking at multiple web articles on how to play audio on phone while watching on tv and they recommended this app. However there was no trial period to make sure this would work. The iphone app store made it an immediate purchase. There was no option to play the audio on my phone. There should be a way to confirm way to confirm before buying. It was a waste of money.

by G-spin1103

I downloaded LocalCast to stream from Google Drive. The bulk of the videos (3-5 min in length) streamed fine. One was too choppy and I had to give up.

The issue was that after each video, it read as disconnected, so I had to reconnect to my chromecast every single time I wanted to stream anything, which is ridiculous and annoying.

LocalCast could be great but it's extremely buggy, and I'll only use it as a last resort because of this.

by Rob1GSXR1000

I’m not going to recite the things others have said. I bought LocalCast without reading reviews because of the number of stars. I’m giving it 3 stars because at least it seems to work OK for local pics on my phone. Hoping the developer can fix everything as it’s a great idea.

by Gradybea

...for some reason it won’t let me upgrade to the pro version. When I tap on “Buy Now” nothing happens. If I could do that then it’s an easy five stars from me!

by Demir9

While playing a video, if i bring LocalCast to foreground, LocalCast automatically stops the current video and starts the next video in my local nas drive folder. It should not start any video without user action. Otherwise good. Thanks.

by Randoguy37

This really is a great idea, and it does work well. Unfortunately, it has some bugs. I hope these bugs will be fixed in a future version. Specifically, the ability to fast forward / rewind (video scrubbing). I did not test this with all videos, but his feature did not work when I played videos from my google drive.

by Aquilla Network

I’m trying to play music on my home mini but when I try to get mp3 from Dropbox it says it’s not supported. I went to the link in the desc and mp3 is supported

EDIT: Uploaded mp3 to google drive and everything works. Very good quality, but still pulling off a star for the fact I had to transfer to drive. 😐

by Rcrnavarro

Don't be discouraged by the other low reviews. It really depends on how you are using it.

I love LocalCast and I think it's worth trying if you have a lot of local content on your device like personal videos, photos or movies that you want to cast.

I've been using it a lot and have been sharing it with friends and colleagues.

by Drc#1

Performs the basic function I was looking for of chomecasting my iphone resident music files (albums) end to end without locking up. Interface is ok but not great. Little slow on the track to track buffer but not that big an issue for the music genre I listen to. Only exception to not being ok I’ve encountered is that LocalCast does consistently lock up when the auto lock display is on. Otherwise it’s the first app I’ve tried for chromecasting iPhone Apple Music that consistently works

by Lundberg02

Four stars because I haven’t found a user guide, and because LocalCast has not been updated for two years. I am amazed it actually works after so many iOS updates. There are some peculiarities, and if there is a user guide I need to read it. I won’t go into the incredible difficulty I have had trying to get iTunes onto my so called smart tv, but it has taken two years and 120 bucks. I hope iPadOS 14 doesn’t blow LocalCast out of the water, because an app not updated for two years has been abandoned by its dev.

by Evan I Am

5 stars for being the first app I can find to cast Google Drive video. However it's not perfect: video scrubbing doesn't work at all, and I usually have to restart LocalCast after each video. Still worth it imo

by Seperry

I installed iOS 11 on 2 devices: an iPhone 6sPlus and and iPad mini 2, and Local Cast crashes on both devices after about 3 seconds during LocalCast ’s startup. I tried deleting and then downloading fresh copies on both devices as well as shutting down each device and restarting. No luck.

FYI, 5 stars because I loved LocalCast when it worked. Hopefully a fix is in the works.

by XxSwoop Swoopxx

Fundamentally this thing works ok, it'll connect to my cloud device and cast things to the tv. However, there are still core issues that need to be resolved: it will randomly crash mid stream, and if LocalCast times out, reconnecting to the tv stops your stream and you have to restart your video. Still usable but I'd love LocalCast to have the kinks worked out.