Cast to several rooms

Choose the kitchen and the living room, press Cast to 2 rooms, and they play the tab in step, as one Sonos group. Each room keeps its own volume.

Choose rooms

Open the extension on the tab that is playing. Tick each room you want under Cast to. With eight rooms or more, the list folds to the rooms you chose; open it to see every room, and Find a room to narrow it. The button counts them: Cast to 3 rooms. Press it.

Here, Kitchen and Living Room are chosen. Press Cast to 2 rooms and they become one cast, with a volume for the pair and one for each room.

Extension · try it: two rooms chosen, ready to cast

Pretend speakers: nothing plays, nothing is saved.

A room is what you choose, even when it is several speakers (a stereo pair, a Sub, surround). It is named as it is in the Sonos app.

What happens to your Sonos groups

A cast plays exactly the rooms you chose, as one group. Sonos groups you made yourself are moved for the cast, and the extension says so above the button before you press it:

“Kitchen leaves its Sonos group until you stop.” Kitchen was grouped with a room you did not choose. It leaves that group for the cast.
“Music in Patio starts again from the top.” Patio was playing with a room you chose, and Sonos restarts its music when that room leaves.

When you stop the cast, or remove a room from it, the rooms go back to the groups they were in. They are not put back when something else took them over: when someone played something else on them from the Sonos app, or another cast took the room.

If the rooms you choose are already one Sonos group, exactly, nothing moves.

Add or remove a room

On a running cast, select Add a room, tick the rooms, and select Add 1 room (or however many). An added room joins the cast’s group; the cast says Joining… under it, then that it joined. If it says Did not join, the room stays as it was and the others play on.

To take one room out, select the square button beside it (a screen reader calls it “Remove Kitchen”, or whichever room it is). Undo puts it back. The last room has no such button: Stop ends the cast.

Rooms that are busy

Beside each room, the extension says whether it is free:

In use: the room is playing something else. Casting to it stops that: “Whatever the room is playing will stop.”
Casting: you are casting to it from another tab.
Casting from elsewhere: someone is casting to it from another browser or computer.

A room plays one thing at a time. Cast to a room another cast holds and the newer cast gets it; the older one carries on in its other rooms. The extension warns you first: “The cast already in this room will end” for a room you are casting to from another tab, and “Whatever the room is playing will stop” for one someone else is casting to.

When the popup opens, it never ticks a room another cast holds, so one press of Cast does not quietly take one over.

Different tabs, different rooms

Each tab is a cast of its own. Cast the jazz tab to the kitchen, then switch to another tab, open the extension and cast that one to the office. Both are listed under Casting now, each with its own rooms, volume and Stop; Go to tab takes you to the tab a cast comes from.

Up to 10 casts can run at once, counting every browser and computer casting through the same companion.

Saved sets

A set is a group of rooms you cast to often, with a name.

Save one: tick two or more rooms in the popup, then select Save these rooms as a set and name it.
Use one: select it above the rooms, and it ticks them.
Rename or remove one: in the extension’s Settings, under Saved sets. Undo brings back a set removed by mistake.

Two sets are there without saving. Last cast ticks the rooms your last cast went to. Everywhere ticks every room, and appears once you have three or more.

If a room in a set is not answering, the popup says so, and the cast goes to the rest.

Volume and start level: the group’s volume, each room’s, and where a cast starts.
A cast will not start: the limit of 10, and casts that stop by themselves.