feat: Chromecast + AirPlay 2 casting#2697
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New cast manager in the core daemon: mDNS discovery of both Google Cast (_googlecast._tcp) and AirPlay (_airplay._tcp) devices, connect, live playback status, media casting with transport controls, and screen mirroring. Exposed over JSON-RPC and wired into the server/router. Discovery prefers avahi via D-Bus when it is running (no parallel mDNS stack, so it avoids UDP 5353 contention) and otherwise falls back to a self healing zeroconf/go-chromecast browser that re-browses periodically. AirPlay devices are keyed by their stable mDNS instance name rather than the flaky deviceid TXT. A preferred device auto connects when discovered. Screen capture and encode run in dms-cast-helper, a cgo gated go-gst program (VA-API DMA-BUF import, I420 chroma, PTS restamp) kept separate so the core stays CGO free. Chromecast mirrors via HLS served from core; AirPlay mirrors via the external doubletake process. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ChromecastService.qml subscribes to the core cast manager and exposes discovery, connect/disconnect, transport controls, screen mirroring and preferred device, with the mDNS browse refcounted to the detail panel. A new Control Center widget (ChromecastWidget) and detail panel (ChromecastDetailContent) list both Chromecast and AirPlay devices, pin the connected device to the top of the list (no duplicate card), and offer stop mirroring plus an auto connect star per device. Registered in the widget model and Control Center components, and added to the default widget set. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Covers Chromecast and AirPlay discovery (avahi preferred, with a self healing zeroconf fallback), building dms-cast-helper, the external doubletake dependency for AirPlay, the firewall port range, and the mDNS port 5353 contention gotcha (notably Chrome). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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CGO is a hard no from me, along with the GPL3 lib which isn't a potential blocker it is a blocker because we need to be able to distribute DMS with vendored modules, which makes the license incompatibility a blocker (for example, Fedora/Redhat wouldnt be able to package dms anymore under the current license). The feature is good and actually very useful (I appreciate the contribution and thoughtfulness of it), but we'd have to find another way to implement it. Anything that depends on C would need to be a binary entirely external from dms or built into quickshell itself basically. I would be more open to this one being a plugin, unless we could workaround the CGO requirements (by either not needing gstreamer, building it into quickshell, or referencing an external binary/dependency that wasn't vendored into dms at all) |
I'm talking to upstream to potentially relicense so that we can ship it. Fingers crossed.
Maybe I should just apply fixes upstream to use gstreamer cli like it used to be in omarroth/doubletake#9 and we're good to include it by default. |
I've reverted the CGO change in upstream PR, still discussing licensing options. |
The doubletake fork was reworked to drop the go-gst (CGO) capture path and drive gst-launch-1.0 instead, fixing the black-screen + pts-timing issues on that path. Update casting docs (build no longer needs CGO or GStreamer dev packages) and the airplay_mirror comment to match. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Summary
Adds a casting feature that discovers and casts to both Chromecast (
_googlecast._tcp) and AirPlay 2 (_airplay._tcp) devices from a single Control Center widget.dmscore via the Go Cast protocol.dms).dms-cast-helperbinary using the GStreamer library (go-gst) — not thegst-launch/ffmpeg/wf-recorderCLIs. The capture pipeline imports the portal's DMA-BUF via VA-API and forces 4:2:0 (I420) chroma (4:4:4 is rejected by most TV decoders → black screen).The main
dmsbinary stays CGO-free; the cast helper is opt-in and needs CGO + GStreamer dev packages. Seedocs/casting.mdfor build, firewall, and environment details.Dependency
AirPlay mirroring relies on the doubletake fork, which drives
gst-launch-1.0for capture and fixes the black-screen + pts-timing issues on that path (DMA-BUF import + 4:2:0 chroma). doubletake builds CGO-free and only needs thegst-launch-1.0CLI plus plugins at runtime:Potential blocker
Status
Slices: discovery, cast, screen-mirror, Control Center widget/service, auto-reconnect. AirPlay 2 mirroring has been verified against a real non-Apple AirPlay 2 receiver; Chromecast paths are built but not yet verified against real Cast hardware.