ChromeCast Audio + Plex taking over a minute to start playing

Third party integrations
1

My whole house audio is several ChromeCast Audio pucks connected to powered speakers that I cast Plex audio to via Home Assistant and media_player.

After updating to 2026.7.3 today, it’s taking a minute or more for my calls to cast music from Plex to my CCAs. I tried rebooting my HA server, no difference.

Looking at the logs, I see this error

Logger: homeassistant.components.automation.play_search
Source: helpers/script.py:2197
Integration: Automation (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 11:44:50 AM (1 occurrence)
Last logged: 11:44:50 AM

Media: play plex search term: Error executing script. Error for call_service at pos 3: CastMediaPlayerEntity._start_app Failed: Failed to execute start app CC1AD845.

Anyone else seeing this problem? At this point I’m looking at reverting to last night’s backup. I’ve never done this, so I’m leery, but if the automations aren’t working, all my home announcements don’t work either - time for dinner, water leak detected, HVAC offline, etc. - and that’s a deal breaker.

2

I use Chromecast and Google speakers throughout the home and have no issues. However the music (radio stations) that I cast are using the URL’s added to HA.

3

Hmm, now it seems to be working as expected again. Must have been sunspots… :slight_smile: