Can't multitask in full screen mode

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swillard

Member
Sep 28, 2010
11
2
When I first got my Chromecast, I was able to play a video (on hulu for example) in fullscreen mode, then alt tab back to Chrome so I could still use my laptop while casting to the TV in full screen.

In the past week, it no longer works. When I alt tab, it automatically goes out of full screen mode. So now I have to have my laptop playing the video in fullscreen if I want to cast it in fullscreen to the TV.

I can't find anything in my searches about this happening to anyone else when I google the problem. Has anyone else run across this issue?

Thanks
 
A

aiiee

Senior Member
Mar 4, 2010
406
60
swillard said:
When I first got my Chromecast, I was able to play a video (on hulu for example) in fullscreen mode, then alt tab back to Chrome so I could still use my laptop while casting to the TV in full screen.

In the past week, it no longer works. When I alt tab, it automatically goes out of full screen mode. So now I have to have my laptop playing the video in fullscreen if I want to cast it in fullscreen to the TV.

I can't find anything in my searches about this happening to anyone else when I google the problem. Has anyone else run across this issue?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Sorry, it works fine for me, and I have the latest update. Maybe reinstall?
 
S

swillard

Member
Sep 28, 2010
11
2
aiiee said:
Sorry, it works fine for me, and I have the latest update. Maybe reinstall?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

What do I reinstall? I've reinstalled the cast extension and that didn't fix it. I have the most current version of Chrome. I can only thing to uninstall and reinstall Chrome to see if that fixes the problem.
 
S

srgibbs99

Senior Member
Dec 26, 2011
71
22
What about Flash?

swillard said:
When I first got my Chromecast, I was able to play a video (on hulu for example) in fullscreen mode, then alt tab back to Chrome so I could still use my laptop while casting to the TV in full screen.

In the past week, it no longer works. When I alt tab, it automatically goes out of full screen mode. So now I have to have my laptop playing the video in fullscreen if I want to cast it in fullscreen to the TV.

I can't find anything in my searches about this happening to anyone else when I google the problem. Has anyone else run across this issue?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

My guess is this is related to the Flash Player or the player on the site that you are using. I have seen this happen on my two monitor setup where when I go to the second screen it breaks out of full screen mode on the first monitor. I'm pretty sure all i had to do was restart my machine. But I would try reinstalling Flash, clearing cache, cookies, etc.

Do you see the same behavior when you are not using Chromecast?

Good luck. :(
 
S

swillard

Member
Sep 28, 2010
11
2
srgibbs99 said:
My guess is this is related to the Flash Player or the player on the site that you are using. I have seen this happen on my two monitor setup where when I go to the second screen it breaks out of full screen mode on the first monitor. I'm pretty sure all i had to do was restart my machine. But I would try reinstalling Flash, clearing cache, cookies, etc.

Do you see the same behavior when you are not using Chromecast?

Good luck. :(
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

It happens with any video, whether casting or not. I used to be able to watch Hulu.com in fullscreen and cast it to the tv, then I could alt tab to another tab to check FB or something. Now it doesn't work. I've tried hulu, youtube, and some other video sites and they all the the same thing. When you hit Alt they immediately go back to the small screen page. I've rebooted my computer and reinstalled the Cast extension. Wondering if I need to reinstall Chrome. It did crash one me a few times this weekend, though not in the past couple of days.
 
M

m2cool2go

Member
Apr 22, 2009
15
1
swillard said:
It happens with any video, whether casting or not. I used to be able to watch Hulu.com in fullscreen and cast it to the tv, then I could alt tab to another tab to check FB or something. Now it doesn't work. I've tried hulu, youtube, and some other video sites and they all the the same thing. When you hit Alt they immediately go back to the small screen page. I've rebooted my computer and reinstalled the Cast extension. Wondering if I need to reinstall Chrome. It did crash one me a few times this weekend, though not in the past couple of days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I have had a similar issue. I received mine on Tuesday and the first day full screen worked for espn and I was able to Alt+Tab to continue browsing. Last night, I tried to do the same thing but It would only display a picture of the tab with the embedded video (when I would go to full screen, the embedded video was black with the tab content around it. when I would exit full screen the embedded video began playing again.) Essentially, I can no longer go into full screen mode for any flash based video (tried with NFL network too). Mine did an update first thing when I turned it on yesterday. I didn't write down the original version I had nor what it updated to. My flash player also updated recently but I think that was before I tried it for the first time. I did not try to reboot my machine or reinstall flash / chrome but I did attempt to do it from 2 different computers on my network and both suffered from the same issue.
 
S

swillard

Member
Sep 28, 2010
11
2
m2cool2go said:
I have had a similar issue. I received mine on Tuesday and the first day full screen worked for espn and I was able to Alt+Tab to continue browsing. Last night, I tried to do the same thing but It would only display a picture of the tab with the embedded video (when I would go to full screen, the embedded video was black with the tab content around it. when I would exit full screen the embedded video began playing again.) Essentially, I can no longer go into full screen mode for any flash based video (tried with NFL network too). Mine did an update first thing when I turned it on yesterday. I didn't write down the original version I had nor what it updated to. My flash player also updated recently but I think that was before I tried it for the first time. I did not try to reboot my machine or reinstall flash / chrome but I did attempt to do it from 2 different computers on my network and both suffered from the same issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I found a post on another forum that helped me resolve the issue. In your google chrome browser (assuming that's what you are using), type in about://plugins. Click on the Details icon (+) on the far right of the Plugins title bar. Look for Adobe flash and you probably have 2 plugins listed. Look for pepflashplayer.dll . It should be listed in the location section. Click on disable. You may need to restart the browser. Try your fullscreen again.

That fixed it for me, so I hope it fixes it for you.
 
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H

hpcolombia

Member
Feb 3, 2008
21
5
I just found a pretty neat trick to do fullscreen.

Install the "Chrome Toolbox" which allows you to open flash videos by themselves, separate from anything else on that webpage.

Go to the page with the flash video you are playing. Cast that tab. Hover over the video and an icon will appear to allow you to put it on its own window. Chromecast will now only show the video, same as if you went fullscreen. Video quality seems better when the window is not minimized.
 
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S

swillard

Member
Sep 28, 2010
11
2
hpcolombia said:
I just found a pretty neat trick to do fullscreen.

Install the "Chrome Toolbox" which allows you to open flash videos by themselves, separate from anything else on that webpage.

Go to the page with the flash video you are playing. Cast that tab. Hover over the video and an icon will appear to allow you to put it on its own window. Chromecast will now only show the video, same as if you went fullscreen. Video quality seems better when the window is not minimized.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Thanks for the tip but I can't get it to work. I have Chrome Toolbox installed, went to Hulu and cast that tab and not getting anything when I hover over the view to pop it out as a separate window.
 
M

mydrl

New member
Sep 26, 2013
2
0
swillard said:
Thanks for the tip but I can't get it to work. I have Chrome Toolbox installed, went to Hulu and cast that tab and not getting anything when I hover over the view to pop it out as a separate window.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

i have the same problem. Cant switch tab by using alt+tab

Does anyone has another solution?

ps: i am using mac
 
S

swillard

Member
Sep 28, 2010
11
2
swillard said:
Thanks for the tip but I can't get it to work. I have Chrome Toolbox installed, went to Hulu and cast that tab and not getting anything when I hover over the view to pop it out as a separate window.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

It's working now. Thanks for the tip. I can use this trick to cast to the TV and still use my laptop for other stuff.
 
O

Obskure

Member
Mar 3, 2010
14
4
Toolbox Pop-out link??

Hi guys!
Any chance of a link to the Chrome Toolbox in the app store? The one I'm looking at is probably not the one I'm looking for.
BTW, Alt-Tab is working for me, but the full-screen video is playing in the background so I can see it in place of the Windows taskbar. I can move about the desktop though
hpcolombia said:
I just found a pretty neat trick to do fullscreen.

Install the "Chrome Toolbox" which allows you to open flash videos by themselves, separate from anything else on that webpage.

Go to the page with the flash video you are playing. Cast that tab. Hover over the video and an icon will appear to allow you to put it on its own window. Chromecast will now only show the video, same as if you went fullscreen. Video quality seems better when the window is not minimized.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
 
E

epirater

Member
Dec 20, 2013
49
2
Unfortunately Chrome Toolbox doesn't work on Windows 8? And isn't available anymore anyway?

This is really annoying. Just got Chromecast.
But when casting a tab of full screen video on certain websites and I move from the tab it reverts to its original frame.

Basically I just want to be able to play full screen content from sites like BBC's iPlayer while doing other things on the computer.

Fiddling with flash plugins doesn't seem to change it. I looked for other possibly relevant extensions in the web store but none really worked.

This seems to me a fundamental but should be pretty simple problem for Google to fix.

Any other ideas now?

Thanks, Tom
 
Last edited:
J

jaydeehitop

Member
Apr 25, 2011
8
1
tomwood said:
Unfortunately Chrome Toolbox doesn't work on Windows 8? And isn't available anymore anyway?

This is really annoying. Just got Chromecast.
But when casting a tab of full screen video on certain websites and I move from the tab it reverts to its original frame.

Basically I just want to be able to play full screen content from sites like BBC's iPlayer while doing other things on the computer.

Fiddling with flash plugins doesn't seem to change it. I looked for other possibly relevant extensions in the web store but none really worked.

This seems to me a fundamental but should be pretty simple problem for Google to fix.

Any other ideas now?

Thanks, Tom
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Not sure about Windows 8, but in 7 I am pretty sure I can hit the Windows key + D which will minimize the browser and allow me to continue what I am doing.
 
bhiga

bhiga

Inactive Recognized Contributor
Oct 13, 2010
2,501
1,018
Obskure said:
BTW, Alt-Tab is working for me, but the full-screen video is playing in the background so I can see it in place of the Windows taskbar. I can move about the desktop though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like that "feature" - my old ATI TV tuner card used to have that. :)

tomwood said:
But when casting a tab of full screen video on certain websites and I move from the tab it reverts to its original frame.

Basically I just want to be able to play full screen content from sites like BBC's iPlayer while doing other things on the computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to depend on how the player achieves full-screen. Some sites have a full-screen option from the browser level, and that seems to behave differently (also sometimes different resolution) than using the full-screen/zoom option in the player.

Good example is www.BabyFirstTV.com
The blue-background full-screen button just full-screens the video in the tab and shows the Exit Fullscreen button when casted.
The full-screen button in the player window (bottom right corner) make the video full-desktop size (and replaces my desktop background), and doesn't show the (annoying) Exit Fullscreen button. The bottom does get cut off, likely because my desktop is 1920x1200 so I'm losing the bottom 180 pixels.
For me at least, either method allows me to Alt-Tab to another application without messing up the Chromecast playback though.
 
E

epirater

Member
Dec 20, 2013
49
2
bhiga said:
It seems to depend on how the player achieves full-screen. Some sites have a full-screen option from the browser level, and that seems to behave differently (also sometimes different resolution) than using the full-screen/zoom option in the player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Thanks, unfortunately though for me when using that browser-level full screen video, and I move from the tab, it reverts to its original frame.
I'm using Windows 8 x64 with Chrome Beta 32.
 
Last edited:
A

Asphyx

Senior Member
Dec 19, 2007
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epirater

Member
Dec 20, 2013
49
2
bhiga said:
Can you try it on babyfirsttv? I'm guessing any browser/tab-level zoom will depend on how the site is coded.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Yeah, if it takes up just the tab it's ok, but when going completely full screen it doesn't stay like that if I move... And unfortunately many sites with video, like the ones I want to use, only have that option.
 
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    cutout0001
    Workaround

    I have found a workaround casting full screen and still being able to alt tab, get this extension from the chromestore, Fullscreen Anything. Icon will be right next to your cast icon, just click it and it will make video ect take up the whole tab and when casted looks pretty good.
    View
    2
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    swillard
    m2cool2go said:
    I have had a similar issue. I received mine on Tuesday and the first day full screen worked for espn and I was able to Alt+Tab to continue browsing. Last night, I tried to do the same thing but It would only display a picture of the tab with the embedded video (when I would go to full screen, the embedded video was black with the tab content around it. when I would exit full screen the embedded video began playing again.) Essentially, I can no longer go into full screen mode for any flash based video (tried with NFL network too). Mine did an update first thing when I turned it on yesterday. I didn't write down the original version I had nor what it updated to. My flash player also updated recently but I think that was before I tried it for the first time. I did not try to reboot my machine or reinstall flash / chrome but I did attempt to do it from 2 different computers on my network and both suffered from the same issue.
    Click to expand...
    Click to collapse

    I found a post on another forum that helped me resolve the issue. In your google chrome browser (assuming that's what you are using), type in about://plugins. Click on the Details icon (+) on the far right of the Plugins title bar. Look for Adobe flash and you probably have 2 plugins listed. Look for pepflashplayer.dll . It should be listed in the location section. Click on disable. You may need to restart the browser. Try your fullscreen again.

    That fixed it for me, so I hope it fixes it for you.
    View
    1
    H
    hpcolombia
    I just found a pretty neat trick to do fullscreen.

    Install the "Chrome Toolbox" which allows you to open flash videos by themselves, separate from anything else on that webpage.

    Go to the page with the flash video you are playing. Cast that tab. Hover over the video and an icon will appear to allow you to put it on its own window. Chromecast will now only show the video, same as if you went fullscreen. Video quality seems better when the window is not minimized.
    View

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