# xat/castnow

commandline chromecast player

Repository: https://github.com/xat/castnow
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/castnow
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Archived: true
Last push: 2022-12-06T14:56:24+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4335, "days_push": 1366, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3813, forks 240 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:20.754639+00:00)

## What it is
Castnow is a command-line utility for playing media files on a Chromecast device. It supports local files, web videos, and torrents, with optional ffmpeg transcoding and subtitle support.

## Use cases
- play a local video file on my chromecast from the terminal
- stream a torrent video directly to chromecast
- cast a video from a URL to my TV
- transcode an avi to mp4 while casting with ffmpeg
- add subtitles when casting a video
- queue multiple videos to play in sequence on chromecast

## When to avoid
- you need casting to DLNA devices instead (use dlnacast)
- you need play/pause controls while transcoding
- you need an actively maintained project with recent fixes

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: maintenance
- function: video-processing, cli
- domain: media, developer-tools
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: chromecast, casting, torrent-streaming, subtitles, ffmpeg-transcoding, media-playback, command-line, nodejs

## Member repositories
- xat/castnow (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:20.754639+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:26:36.535851+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/xat/castnow (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:20.754639+00:00, sha d217784cc2ca)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/castnow (fetched 2026-08-29T09:21:35.808787+00:00, sha e755942badd8)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.