Google appears to be making meaningful progress on a long-awaited improvement for Chrome’s Cast Streaming technology. A newly landed Chromium code change suggests that AV1 hardware encoding for Cast Streaming is finally on its way, potentially paving the road for more efficient screen mirroring and casting experiences in future Chrome releases.

The development is particularly noteworthy because it traces its roots back to a feature request first filed in Chromium in 2022.

At the time, Chrome’s Cast Streaming implementation did not support using a hardware AV1 encoder, even on devices that had dedicated AV1 encoding capabilities. The request then sat largely dormant for years before being reassigned in March 2024. But things started picking up in 2025 when a Chromium developer noted:

"Now that we support using media::VideoEncoder in Cast, this is relatively trivial but needs some additional follow up work."

That comment suggested much of the groundwork had already been completed behind the scenes. The issue was officially marked “In Progress (Accepted)” on May 19, 2026, and recent updates indicate development is moving forward.

Most notably, a Chromium commit titled “[Cast Streaming] Enable AV1 hardware encoding” recently landed in the project’s main branch. According to the commit description:

“Now that the MediaVideoEncoderWrapper implementation has landed, this CL resolves a long standing TODO to enable AV1 hardware encoding if available on the platform. This is still gated behind a feature flag for future experimentation.”

In simple terms, Chromium can now use dedicated AV1 encoding hardware when available on a supported device. For everyday users, that may sound like a highly technical change, but the potential benefits are easy to understand.

AV1 is a modern video codec designed to deliver the same video quality while using less bandwidth compared to older technologies. That improved efficiency has made it increasingly popular across the streaming industry. Since Cast Streaming involves continuously capturing, encoding, and transmitting video from your browser to another screen, using AV1 hardware acceleration could help make the process more efficient.

Potential benefits include:

Better video quality during casting sessions
Reduced bandwidth consumption
Lower CPU usage
Improved power efficiency on laptops
Smoother screen mirroring experiences

The feature is not ready for general use just yet, however.

As shown in Chrome’s Experiments page below, users can already spot a flag called “Enable AV1 video encoding for Cast Streaming.” The flag’s description states that Chrome can offer the AV1 codec during Cast Streaming negotiations and use it if selected for the session. Currently, the feature remains disabled by default and is still hidden behind an experimental flag on Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS.

That aligns with the latest commit message, which notes that the functionality remains gated for further experimentation and testing. While Google has not revealed when AV1 hardware encoding will become enabled by default, the latest code changes represent the strongest sign yet that the feature is actively being developed.

For Chrome users who frequently cast tabs, mirror screens, or stream content to larger displays, this is one of those under-the-hood upgrades that could eventually make the experience faster, smoother, and more efficient without requiring any extra effort.

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