CastMute
CastMute
Hero product shot · 2400 × 1500 · cut-out on transparent The device at three-quarter angle, lit from the left, no background — it sits over the concentric rings behind this box. This is the one image people will remember, and its job is to make a 22 × 31 mm plastic box look like an object worth owning.
A small box that plugs into any USB charger and mutes your television through every ad break1 — then unmutes the moment your show is back.
No app to install. No account to create. One minute of setup in a browser, once, and then it is a small green light behind the TV.
Not yet for sale
Nobody reaches for the remote fast enough. The break starts at full volume, you scramble, and by the time it is quiet the show is back. CastMute is simply there before you are.
Hero video · 16:9 · 20–30 seconds, silent loop One unbroken take of a real ad break: show playing, break starts, the TV's volume overlay drops to zero on its own, break ends, sound returns. No narration, no cuts. The entire pitch is that nothing happens and nobody touches anything.
Three steps, and none of them involve downloading anything.
Step 1 · 1200 × 1200 A hand plugging the device into a wall charger, amber light clearly visible.
Any USB charger will do. The light turns amber to say it is waiting for you.
Step 2 · 1200 × 1200 iPhone Wi-Fi settings showing the CastMute-A4F2 network, with the setup page beside it.
Join the CastMute- network from your phone. A setup page opens by
itself. Pick your network, type the password, save.
Step 3 · 1200 × 1200 The device resting behind a TV, small green light, everything else dark.
The light turns green. Leave it plugged in and forget it exists — which is rather the point.
CastMute watches the Cast devices in your house at once2, so you do not need one per set. Put it wherever the Wi-Fi is best — it never has to be near the TV it is muting.
Light detail · 1600 × 1200 Macro of the lit window in the lid, green, in a dim room. Shallow depth of field. Should look like a considered detail rather than an indicator lamp.
Green is watching. A green flash is a break being muted. Purple, blue, red and amber each say exactly what is wrong, with no app required to read them.
Status page · 1600 × 1200 iPhone held in hand showing castmute.local — the television list and the signal reading. Screenshot composited into the device frame.
Open castmute.local from any device on your network to see the
televisions it found, its signal strength and the firmware it is running.
Silences the ad as it starts, so nothing arrives at full volume in the middle of a scene.
Sound returns as the programme resumes. You never find the TV silent for a reason you have to work out.
Mute the television yourself and CastMute notices, then leaves it alone rather than fighting you for the volume.
Installs new firmware on its own3. An update that fails to start properly rolls back to the version that worked.
The honest list. If any of these describes your setup, CastMute will do nothing for you, and it is better that you know now than later.
Samsung, Roku and Fire TV do not speak Google Cast. CastMute cannot see them at all — not partially, not unreliably. Not at all.
From a phone, tablet or laptop. An app you open with the television's own remote is invisible to it.
Where ads are stitched into the video stream itself, nothing outside that app can tell an ad from the programme. CastMute currently recognises breaks on Disney+, Prime Video, Hulu and YouTube.
It holds a connection to each television continuously, so it cares more about signal strength than your phone does. Beside the router is an excellent place for it.
You may still catch a fraction of a second between two back-to-back ads, where the stream briefly reports a break that has ended when it has not.
http://castmute.local, served by the device on your own networkScale shot · 16:9 · 2200 × 1238 The device beside something universally understood for size — a coin, a USB-C plug, a thumbnail. Plain white, top-down, unstyled. This is the picture people look for when they cannot picture 22 × 31 mm.
CastMute works. It is running on real hardware in a real living room, muting real ad breaks. But it is one person's project, currently in a 3D-printed case, without the radio certification a product needs before it can legally be sold in the United States.
If you have a Chromecast and would be willing to live with an early one, say so. It comes straight to me — there is no list and no form.