Android Screen Mirroring to TV Not Working: How to Actually Fix It

Casting and mirroring are not the same thing, and they fail for different reasons.

• Casting sends one app's content to the TV. You open YouTube or Netflix, tap the cast icon, and the TV pulls the video straight from the internet. Your phone is just the remote after that. You can lock the phone or use other apps and the video keeps playing.
• Mirroring copies your entire phone screen to the TV in real time, including the home screen and notifications. This runs through the Google Home app, under "Cast screen". It uses more battery, looks a little softer, and can lag a bit.

This matters because casting from inside an app and mirroring the whole screen lean on slightly different parts of the same plumbing. If casting a YouTube video works but full screen mirroring does not, you do not have a network problem. You have a mirroring-specific hiccup, and the fix is usually to update the Google Home app and reboot the phone. If neither one works, the cause is almost always the network, so keep reading.

This is the fix for more cases than everything else combined. Your phone and your streaming device have to be on the same network to find each other. The catch is that most modern routers broadcast two networks that look like one.

A dual-band router puts out a 2.4GHz signal and a 5GHz signal. Sometimes they share one name, sometimes they are split into something like "MyWiFi" and "MyWiFi_5G". Your phone, being newer, often grabs the 5GHz band for speed. An older Chromecast may only support 2.4GHz. When they sit on different bands, they simply cannot see each other, and the TV never appears in your cast list.

To test it, connect your phone to the same band the TV is on. If your TV is on 2.4GHz, switch your phone to the 2.4GHz network temporarily and try again. If the device suddenly shows up, you found it. For a permanent fix you can either keep both on the same band, or log into your router and turn on "band steering" or a setting that lets devices discover each other across bands. The Google TV Streamer and newer Chromecast hardware handle 5GHz fine, so on recent gear this is less common, but it still catches people with mixed-age equipment.

If both devices are clearly on the same network and the same band but they still cannot see each other, look at your router for a setting called AP isolation, client isolation, or sometimes "guest network". When this is on, every device gets internet but is walled off from every other device on the Wi-Fi. That is great for a coffee shop and terrible for casting, because your phone is no longer allowed to talk to your TV.

Two common ways this bites you:

• Your TV or dongle got set up on the guest network by accident. Guest networks usually have isolation on by default. Move the streaming device onto your main network.
• A mesh system or an internet provider's router shipped with client isolation enabled. Log into the router admin page, search the settings for "isolation" or "AP isolation", and turn it off for your main network.

After you change a router setting, give it a minute and reboot the streaming device so it re-announces itself on the network.

A VPN is one of the sneakiest causes because everything else looks normal. Your phone shows full Wi-Fi, the TV is on, and casting just will not connect.

Here is why. A streaming device announces itself on your local network using small broadcast messages, a system called mDNS. That is how your phone discovers it. A VPN routes your traffic through a remote tunnel, and in doing so it usually swallows those local broadcast messages. Your phone can reach the whole internet but can no longer hear the device sitting three feet away.

The quick test is to turn the VPN off completely and try to cast. If it works, the VPN was the problem. If you need the VPN running for other things, open your VPN app and look for "split tunneling" or a "LAN bypass" or "local network" option, then exclude your casting app or allow local network traffic. Be honest with yourself about the limit here. On Android, split tunneling does not always let those local broadcasts through, even when you exclude the right app, because multicast traffic can still get pulled into the tunnel. If the bypass does not work, you may just have to toggle the VPN off while you cast.

Restarting fixes a surprising number of stuck states, but most people do it wrong by just tapping restart in a menu. Do it at the power level.

• Unplug the streaming device from power. Not the HDMI, the power cable. Wait at least 20 to 30 seconds so it fully drains, then plug it back in and let it boot for a couple of minutes.
• While you are at it, reboot your router by unplugging it for 30 seconds. A router that has been up for months can get confused about which device is which.
• Restart your phone too. It clears whatever the Wi-Fi stack was holding onto.

Bring everything back up, wait until the TV reaches its home screen, then try casting again. This step alone clears a lot of "it worked yesterday" cases.

Casting on Android runs through Google Play services and the Cast system built into your phone. When that cache gets corrupted, the cast icon can vanish, or connections hang forever on "connecting". Clearing the cache is safe and does not log you out of anything.

On most Android phones in 2026:

• Open Settings, then Apps, then Google Play services.
• Tap Storage and cache.
• Tap Clear cache. Do not tap Clear storage or Clear data, since that can reset Google services and create more hassle.

Do the same for the Google Home app and for the specific app you are casting from, like YouTube or Netflix. Then reboot the phone. While you are in the Play Store, update Google Home, Google Play services, and Android System WebView, because an out-of-date Google Home app is a real cause of mirroring that refuses to start.

Newer versions of Android lock down local network scanning behind permissions, and a recent update or a fresh phone can leave them off. If your phone genuinely cannot find any cast device while everything else checks out, look here.

• Make sure Wi-Fi scanning and location are available to the system. Some discovery features quietly depend on them.
• In Settings under Apps, open the Google Home app's permissions and confirm Nearby devices and Local network access are allowed.
• If you are on a work phone or a profile managed by an employer, casting may be blocked by policy. That is not something you can fix from the phone, and you would need to ask whoever manages the device.

It is also worth turning mobile data off for a moment while testing. Occasionally the phone tries to reach the device over cellular and gives up, when it should be using Wi-Fi.

If you have worked through everything above and the device still will not behave, reset it and pair it fresh. This wipes the device's stored Wi-Fi and starts clean, which clears out old credentials from a network you no longer use.

For a Google TV Streamer or Chromecast with Google TV, go to Settings, then System, then About, then Factory reset. For an older Chromecast dongle, hold the button on the device for about 25 seconds until the light flashes, then release. After the reset, open the Google Home app on your phone, tap to add a device, and follow the setup to put it back on your Wi-Fi.

One honest caution. Google had a stretch in early 2025 where some factory-reset second-generation Chromecasts and Chromecast Audio units would not pair again until the Google Home app was updated to the fixed version. If you reset an older device and it refuses to come back, update Google Home first before you assume the hardware died. Also remember that the original Chromecast line was discontinued in 2024 and replaced by the Google TV Streamer, so the very oldest dongles are getting long in the tooth and may eventually stop receiving updates.