Making the Chromecast a really useful productivity engine?

One of my favorite pieces of kit – since its latest upgrade and a network reboot sorted out its wifi connectivity problems at least – is my Chromecast, ideal for streaming music or movies to my big screen while I toil at my desktop. But with my setup at least, there are still some crucial hooks missing that would turn it into a full-on productivity killer, as well as a great entertainment device, and would even make it ideal for widescreen reading as well.

Crucially, Chromecast is still held back when working with Android devices. That makes total counter-intuitive non-sense, but that’s how it is. Google is gradually introducing screen mirroring over Chromecast to Android, and the option is already there in Display settings, but only for Android OS 4.4.2 and above, and then only on a select group of devices, including the Tesco Hudl 2 and the Nexus 7 2013 version, but not my 2012 version. As a result, I can’t use my tablet to write with or work with on the big screen, and I can’t mirror Kindle or other ereader pages to the monitor, or even HTML web texts.

The desktop version of the Chrome browser will happily send any open tab to Chromecast via the Google Cast plugin, but so far, not the Android version, although some limited streaming functionality has been implemented. And that’s all well and good for the desktop – but what if I want to work from the tablet? And besides, the point of the desktop is that it already has its own screen, whereas the extra screen real estate can really help the tablet.

This wouldn’t be such an issue if more productivity or ereading Android apps had the kind of Chromecast hooks now built into entertainment apps like TuneIn Radio or of course, YouTube, but so far only one Android productivity app does – Polaris Office. Google Docs doesn’t – nor does more popular office suites like Docs To Go. Nor does Google Drive.  Nor, critically, does Evernote. And apparently, Google is pushing for more and more websites, let alone apps, to be Google Cast Ready – so why not follow up by pressing for key non-entertainment Android apps to be castable, including its own?

So, two cheers for Chromecast still, and maybe this kind of frustration will be a thing of the past very soon. But the not-quite-there aggravations of trying to work with Chromecast are galling, and seemingly illogical. Google, you made a great device, now could you please finish the job?