Why integration of Google Cast alongside Exoplayer really sucks?

Recently I played around with the integration of Google Cast inside Exoplayer and I was really amazed to see how bad it is and how much it sucks. I decided to write this post with the idea it will help someone else who is also struggling with the Google Cast integration for exoplayer.

Requirements

So the requirements I had for the integration of Google Cast are quite simple:

  • Play an item on cast
  • Play a list of items – when you press Next you go to the next item
  • Forward / Backwards with 30 seconds – so you can skip through the track
  • Play / Pause support
  • Switch between lists of items – you can player item 2 of List A, you should be able to switch to item 3 of List B
  • Switch between phone playback and cast playback – switch from cast to app and from app to cast
  • Update the progress when casting – time elapsed should also be updated
  • Volume up/down are supported
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