Chromecast users worldwide are reporting issues with their second-generation devices, which have suddenly stopped working.

Reports of the problem flooded Reddit and other online forums over the weekend, revealing a common error message stating that the device could not be authenticated.

Speculation arose that Google had discontinued support for the aging Chromecast models, but the company has confirmed that the issue is not intentional and that a fix is in progress.

According to reports from users investigating the problem, the root cause appears to be an expired authentication certificate on the affected devices. The certificate, which expired on March 9, has left users unable to cast content to their Chromecast units.

A Google representative addressed the outage on Reddit, advising users not to factory reset their devices while engineers work on a solution.

“Do not factory reset your device – we will keep you all updated when the fix rolls out,” the official GoogleNestCommunity account posted. “If you have already factory reset your device, we will provide instructions to set it back up as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”

At this stage, the issue seems to be affecting only second-generation Chromecast and Chromecast Audio models. First- and third-generation Chromecasts, along with Chromecast Ultra and Google TV devices, remain functional.

While Google has yet to provide an official timeline for a fix, industry experts suggest the issue is likely a server-side authentication error rather than a deliberate discontinuation of support.

Chromecast users will need to wait for Google to issue a software update or roll out a certificate renewal to restore functionality.