
Insights At a Glance:
- Chromecast with Google TV (4K) is getting a large 809MB update.
- The update comes after the buggy Android 14 update that was pulled in March.
- Firmware now at UTTC.241218.008.H1.
Chromecast with Google TV (4K) users are in for a surprise: a fresh update weighing in at a whopping 809MB is now rolling out. But despite the hefty size, Google only lists “System stability and improvements” in the changelog. That’s it. No bells, no whistles — just the usual vague wording we’ve come to expect from most big companies. Of course, excluding X (formerly Twitter).
Yet make no mistake, this is more than just a minor patch. The update bumps the firmware version to UTTC.241218.H1.13427172, up from the previous UTTC.241218.004.12950887, signaling something substantial under the hood. And given how chaotic the initial Android 14 update was back in March 2025, this one couldn’t have come sooner.
If you recall, the Android 14 update was so buggy that Google had to pause the rollout altogether. (Yes, it was that bad.) The interface lagged, apps misbehaved, and users were left wondering whether they’d mistakenly bought a prototype instead of a finished product. Google eventually pulled the update and went quiet — until now.
Fast forward to June 2025, and it seems the search giant is back on the update train. This latest release is rolling out broadly — both to users who never got the original Android 14 update and to those of us who suffered through the botched version. Interestingly, even if you already had Android 14 installed, you’re still getting the same 809MB package.
That suggests Google isn’t bothering with an incremental patch. Instead, they may be pushing a clean reinstallation of Android 14 — possibly to sweep away remnants of the flawed build. In a way, it’s like wiping the slate clean without factory resetting your device.
While there’s still no official word on everything this update includes (it’s still downloading on my own Chromecast as I write this), I’d wager it likely brings a newer security patch on top of the stability improvements.
Now that the update is installed, it turns out that the security patch level remains at January 2025, meaning this is essentially just a new Android 14 build for those who never got it, and a fresh install for those who did — no newer patch bundled in.
The last confirmed patch level was January 2025 — and given how long it’s been, an updated security baseline to match the Xiaomi Mi Box S 2nd-Gen’s April 2025 would’ve been very welcome.
So far, there’s no new UI or features spotted — but as with all things Google TV, some of the changes might be under the hood or waiting to be toggled on server-side. We’ll keep an eye on that.
Meanwhile, you might want to check out how I used my Chromecast with Google TV to outsmart the subscription craze and on course to save KES 24,000 a year.
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