ThePixel Tabletmight not be theNest Hub Max replacementyou’ve been begging for, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t learned some tricks from Google’s lineup of smart displays. One of the coolest abilities of this slate is its ability to act as a cast receiver, something most other Android devices aren’t capable of doing. A couple of weeks ago, we saw evidence that Google was working on making iteasier to cast from your smartphone to the Pixel Tablet, and now, the exact process for how this works is starting to take shape.
Earlier this month, we learned about a new casting trick coming to the Pixel Tablet. Once it’s live, you’ll be able to select the display as a casting target, without having to interact with the menus on your device. Instead, just by holding your phone in front of it, the ultra-wideband chip in the Pixel Tablet would detect your device, allowing you to beam whatever media you want through a streamlined process. Now, Mishaal Rahman has tweeted a closer look at exactly how this works on your smartphone.
As seen inRahman’s post, once live, you’ll find this feature in your Google settings under an option labeled “Hold close to cast.” According to the settings page that appears when you tap for more information, this tool triggers whenever your device is held out near the Pixel Tablet. If it’s half as simple as the diagram in settings seems to indicate, the two gadgets being near each other — while on the same network — is all it would take to start casting, perhaps combined with a quick press on your phone screen to confirm casting. Not bad.
Presumably, the ultra-wideband requirement to detect where your phone is in proximity to the tablet is why this feature is limited to the Pixel Tablet, though it’s easy to imagine this eventually arriving for any other slate supporting UWB. As someone who, just yesterday, cast a YouTube video to his Nest Hub Max while cooking — something I found oddly convoluted, as the display initially refused to appear in my list of cast-enabled gadgets — a physical trigger like this would save both time and headaches. In fact,Apple does something similiarwith hand-off onHomePod devices, though the addition of video really brings things to a whole new level.
It’s unclear exactly when this might roll out to users, but with Android 14 set to launch seemingly at any moment, it’s hard to imagine a better time. Factor in thatrecent glimpse of handwriting support, and it seems like some big changes are afoot for this slate. If Google is really focused on building an ecosystem out of its Pixel lineup, bringing these gadgets closer than ever through improvements like this one seems like a great place to start.
