Casting

Send playback to another screen straight from the player.

Cordbox only ever sends casts outward — it doesn't receive them from other apps or devices, and doesn't run as a receiver for either AirPlay or Chromecast.

AirPlay

Uses the standard system AirPlay control — send whatever's playing to an Apple TV or an AirPlay-compatible television or speaker. AirPlay is only available for streams playing through Cordbox's AVPlayer engine — VLCKit doesn't support it yet. Some streams use VLCKit automatically because they don't play reliably in AVPlayer; see Choosing a player engine for why, and how to check or change which one a source is using.

Chromecast

Off by default — turn on Enable Chromecast in Settings first. Once on, it uses the standard Google Cast SDK to send whatever's playing to a Chromecast or a Chromecast-built-in TV or speaker, sender-side only, same as AirPlay above. Experimental.

If a source isn't natively Cast-compatible, Cordbox automatically retries the cast through an on-device Just-In-Time fix rather than failing outright — the same fix used for AVPlayer playback, applied here for whatever the Chromecast receiver itself needs.

Live channels on Xtream, Enigma2, and Stalker sources

These three source types cast a live channel differently from M3U: there's no direct hand-off of the channel's own URL to the receiver at all. Instead, casting a live channel requires Just-In-Time Transcode — both the main toggle and Apply to Live Channels — turned on in Settings; the cast button for a live channel from one of these sources simply doesn't appear otherwise. See Just-In-Time Transcode for what it fixes and its own known limitations — if a channel shows JIT: Failed, casting won't be available for that channel either, since there's no non-JIT path for live content on these source types.

One side effect worth knowing: because Just-In-Time Transcode always processes the stream on this device before handing it to the receiver, a live Xtream, Enigma2, or Stalker channel is effectively always cast "through this device" — there's no separate setting for it, and no need for one, since a VPN-only source of one of these types already works over Chromecast/AirPlay for free once JIT is on, the same way Through This Device below does for M3U.

Casting a VPN-only M3U source

M3U sources have a per-source Casting Route setting, since M3U's normal cast is genuinely direct — the channel's own URL handed straight to the Chromecast or Apple TV, which works for most setups. Choose Through This Device instead if that source is only reachable while your device is connected to a VPN — a Chromecast or Apple TV has no VPN of its own, so it can't reach the stream directly. With this set, your device fetches the stream itself and relays it over your local network instead, for both AirPlay and Chromecast. This only works while Cordbox stays open in the foreground; local-only playback (no casting or AirPlay) is unaffected either way. See Remote Access for more on using Cordbox over a VPN.