What is this for? I don’t understand it. How do I use it? Can I use it on Chromecasts?
I type things, but nothing happen. So I’m not sure if I’m using it right…
Type there something and listen 
This it to convert text to speach and then it will play it loud.
Huh, doesn’t work for me. I type text, it takes control of the speaker, and nothing comes out.
Nothing in the logs. I do have Google Translate enabled:
# Text to speech
tts:
- platform: google_translate
do you get the connection sound after you press the arrow?
By default chromecasts / google home devices are in standby. if your text is too short (e.g. test) you may not hear anything as the first couple of seconds are lost while the connection takes place.
What happens if you submit some text, wait 5 sec, then do it again?
Also stupid question, but make sure the volume is high enough 
Yes, and I use a phrase like “Testing text to speak.” The speaker goes into a “Playing” status (i.e. shows the Pause icon in the list), but nothing plays. I’ve waited a full minute, nothing.
The speaker is almost always on, playing an internet station. It’s high enough. 
Sorry man not sure what else to try…
Set your logs into debug for media player and tts and see what you get…
Did you figure out how to get this to work? I’m having the same issue. I hear the connect sound, but I then nothing is spoken on the speaker.
Nope. I hadn’t even gave it another thought after trying this. I just left it.
I had noticed this issue for a long time, it never work for me, neither in the ios companion app, or in any browser (edge, chrome, safari).
I had tried several tts engines and mpd media_player and dlna media_player (with windows media player on windows).
While the tts works very well by calling the xxx_say service, nothing could happen when I click the arrow in this media control card.
Hmm, OK.
What’s your network setup like?
Can it be VLAN segmentation/firewall issue?
If the chromecast needs to fetch some generated sound file (wav/mp3…) of the text from the homeassistant machine?
I’ll dig a bit more, to see how it all is connected, and look through my firewall logs etc.
For my network setup, I don’t allow communication to originate from the network the speakers are on, to other networks. Just the other way.
So if the speakers try to fetch some kinda sound file it would be blocked.
But that’s the only thing I can think of is wrong for my setup.