Zebcast is a multi-protocol media casting app for Android. It lets you send video from your phone to a TV or other screen using whichever casting technology your display supports — Chromecast, DLNA, or Miracast — all from a single app.

Zebcast supports Chromecast and Chromecast-built-in TVs, DLNA/UPnP smart TVs and media players, and Miracast (Wi-Fi Direct) displays. It can also cast to LG webOS TVs and to Zebcast Direct receivers. If your TV supports any one of these, Zebcast can usually cast to it.

Zebcast runs on Android 7.0 (Nougat) or later. Miracast works most reliably on Android 10 or newer. It runs on phones and tablets — there is no iPhone or iPad version yet.

It depends on the mode. For Chromecast and DLNA, your phone and TV must be on the same Wi-Fi network. Miracast is different: your phone connects directly to the display over a private Wi-Fi Direct link, so a shared Wi-Fi network is not required for that mode.

Yes. Zebcast is free to download and use, and every casting option works on the free version. The free version is ad-supported, and free casting from the built-in browser is limited to 6 casts per month. If you'd prefer no ads, an optional ad-free upgrade is available, and a higher tier also removes the monthly browser-casting limit.

First, check the basics: for Chromecast and DLNA, your phone and TV must be on the same Wi-Fi network, the TV must be powered on and awake, and your router must allow local device discovery (some routers block it with 'AP isolation' or a separate guest network). If your TV was visible before and then disappeared, your phone's Wi-Fi can sometimes get into a state where it stops hearing the messages devices use to announce themselves. When that happens, Zebcast can detect it and offer a one-tap option to restart Wi-Fi, which usually brings the device back — or you can simply turn your phone's Wi-Fi off and on again.

This is almost always a weak or congested Wi-Fi signal. Move closer to your router, reduce other heavy network use (large downloads, other streams), and if your router offers a 5 GHz band, connect your phone to it for more bandwidth. A wired connection from your router to the TV, where possible, also helps.

Yes. Zebcast has a built-in web browser (the 'Web' tab). Open a site, play a video, and cast it to your TV.

Zebcast plays the common containers and codecs — including MP4, MKV, AVI and MOV files using H.264 or H.265 (HEVC) video, with AAC, MP3 or AC-3 audio. If your TV can't play a particular file directly, Zebcast can transcode it on the fly so it still casts.

No. DRM-protected video from services such as Netflix or Disney+ can't be cast through Zebcast — content protection prevents third-party apps from accessing it. To watch those services on your TV, use the service's own cast button or a built-in casting device.

Zebcast includes a built-in browser that can play videos from websites, but it can't skip the ads on those sites. Those ads are part of the content the website serves, and skipping them would break the website's terms of service, so Zebcast doesn't do it. What you can do is remove ads from Zebcast itself: the optional ad-free upgrade takes the ads out of the app.

Apps that legitimately skip ads usually have agreements with the content providers to do so, or they show their own content where they control the ads. Zebcast simply displays websites in its built-in browser, so the ads come from those sites — bypassing them would break the sites' terms of service. Zebcast respects that and does not skip ads on third-party content. It can, however, remove ads from Zebcast itself through the ad-free upgrade.

A paid upgrade removes Zebcast's own ads, but it can't remove ads on third-party websites. Those ads belong to the website, not to Zebcast — skipping them would break the website's terms of service, and no subscription changes that. Zebcast's paid upgrade makes the app itself ad-free, but content you watch from external sites still plays exactly as that site serves it.

No. On-device transcoding — converting a video on your phone so your TV can play it — is free and unlimited on every version of Zebcast, including the free, ad-supported one. The free version's only monthly limit is on casting from the built-in browser (6 free browser casts per month), and a paid upgrade removes that limit. Separately, there is an optional Cloud Transcode feature for large or demanding files that runs the conversion on our servers instead of your phone; because it uses paid cloud resources, it's a pay-per-file purchase rather than something the upgrade includes.

Zebcast streams to TVs and adapters using Miracast (Wi-Fi Display). In practice, many devices that advertise Miracast support have outdated firmware or non-standard implementations that fail or stall partway through connecting. Zebcast handles this in two ways. First, it works with a range of common Miracast adapters such as MiraScreen, EZCast/AnyCast, and AMB dongles; because these often have flaky Miracast handshakes, Zebcast can automatically fall back to streaming over DLNA across the same direct connection, so the device keeps working even when its Miracast layer doesn't. Second, some TVs or sticks (for example Roku) are stricter and may only connect from certain phones: Roku in particular tends to work reliably only from Qualcomm-based phones and may refuse phones with other Wi-Fi chipsets (such as some MediaTek or Unisoc models), which is a limitation of the phone's Wi-Fi Direct driver rather than Zebcast. If your TV won't stream, make sure its firmware is up to date, try a different phone if you can, and retry the connection (the first attempt after a cold start sometimes times out, but a second attempt often succeeds). If it still doesn't work, the device may simply have an incompatible Miracast implementation.

Each permission maps to a feature you actually use. Network and Wi-Fi access — including the 'nearby Wi-Fi devices' permission, and location access on newer Android versions — is what lets Zebcast find TVs, sticks, and dongles on your local network; Android specifically requires location and nearby-device permissions to scan Wi-Fi, but Zebcast does not use your GPS position and flags this permission as 'never for location'. Storage and media access lets the app find and play the videos, music, and photos on your phone so you can cast them. The foreground service, keep-awake, notification, and battery-optimization permissions keep your cast playing reliably and show playback controls when the app is in the background or your screen is off. The microphone permission is used only for the optional voice-feedback feature — recording a short voice note to send us feedback — and is off unless you turn it on; it is never used to listen in the background. As for data: Zebcast does collect anonymized diagnostic and usage information to keep casting working across the huge range of phones and TVs out there. This includes a random device ID (not linked to your name, email, Google account, or advertising ID), your phone's hardware and Android details, which features you use, and details about each cast such as the protocol, media type, whether it succeeded, any errors, session length, Wi-Fi quality, battery level, and the manufacturer of the TV. Device MAC addresses are stored only as a one-way hash that cannot be reversed. Zebcast does not collect the names, contents, or URLs of the files you cast, your browsing history, or your screen's audio or video. You can turn telemetry off entirely in Settings, and full details are in our privacy policy.

You can reach Zebcast support by emailing support@zebcast.com. You can also use the in-app feedback form, which sends your message straight to the support team.

You can report a bug or request a feature by emailing support@zebcast.com, or by using the in-app feedback form, which sends your report directly to the team. Including your phone model, Android version, and the device you were casting to helps us reproduce the problem faster.

Yes, some warming is normal. To send your screen over Miracast, your phone has to continuously compress the video in software while keeping up a constant direct wireless link to the display, and that combination uses a lot of processing power and keeps the Wi-Fi radio busy — which generates heat. To stay comfortable, keep your phone in a well-ventilated spot and avoid covering it, and if it gets very warm, consider casting in shorter sessions so it can cool down between uses.

Not yet — Zebcast is currently an Android app, and there isn't an iPhone or iPad version available at this time. If we bring Zebcast to iOS in the future, Miracast wouldn't be available there, because iOS has no Miracast/Wi-Fi Display support at all (Apple's screen-sharing technology is AirPlay instead). Chromecast and DLNA casting would still work.

When you cast from the built-in browser, Zebcast shows different options depending on what's on the page. 'Cast Full Page' is always available: it mirrors the whole web page to your TV (at the correct aspect ratio, with black bars if needed), which is useful for sites with no single video to pick out, or for putting any web page on the big screen. When a playable video is detected — and you're casting to a DLNA TV rather than a Miracast screen — two extra options appear: 'Cast Video' (currently in beta), which sends just the detected video so it plays cleanly at full quality, and 'DMS Video Cast' (also in beta), which publishes that video to your TV's own media menu so the TV plays it with its native player. There is no separate 'Browser Mirroring' feature — whole-page mirroring is what 'Cast Full Page' does.

When you start a browser cast, there's a 'Mirror on phone' switch. Leave it on and the browser stays visible on your phone — and you can even switch tabs while casting. Turn it off to cast in the background: the phone screen dims and the cast keeps running on your TV even after you leave the browser or lock your phone, so you can go do other things. That makes it handy for leaving something playing on a screen, such as turning a TV into a simple always-on display for a dashboard or signage.

It comes down to differences in the Wi-Fi hardware and software inside different phones. Miracast relies on a direct phone-to-display Wi-Fi connection, and not every phone's Wi-Fi chip and drivers handle it equally well. Phones built on more mature Wi-Fi platforms (for example many Qualcomm-based models) tend to set up that direct connection reliably, while some other phones drop or refuse the connection, or only allow it on certain Wi-Fi channels, which can cause it to fail. Separately, on some phones the Wi-Fi can get into a state where it stops finding devices after a casting session; if that happens, Zebcast can offer a one-tap Wi-Fi restart, or you can turn Wi-Fi off and on yourself. If your Samsung phone won't connect over Miracast, try the Wi-Fi restart, make sure no other screen-sharing app (like Smart View) is running, and as an alternative cast the same content over Chromecast or DLNA.

Zebcast has been around since 2014. Over the years it has grown to support several casting methods — DLNA, Chromecast, and Miracast — so you can send video from your phone to a wide range of TVs and displays.

At the moment Zebcast is available in English only. Other languages aren't supported yet.