Best Amazon Fire TV Stick Hacks

The first thing you need to understand about Amazon Fire Nothing is that a Fire TV and a Fire TV Stick are not the same thing. Some hacks only work on Fire TVs, others only work with Fire TV Sticks, and still others work with both. You can have a Google TV (or any other type of TV) and connect a Fire TV Stick to it: so if you don’t have a Fire TV, know that there is a simple $30 solution that can solve this problem. I’ve been using Fire OS for many years, and while it’s not my favorite, it has some pretty cool hacks that no other operating system offers.

If you press Fast forward And Rewind at the same time and hold them for two seconds, you will activate the text banner in the navigation menu. This will bring up a white box at the bottom of the screen with more information about whatever you highlight in the navigation menu. You can get IMDB ratings, movie or show duration, release year, rating, summaries, etc. You can use the Fast forward arrow to get more information about the banner. You also get a better menu by pressing the key Menu button, which gives you a different menu option, where you can add shows or movies to your watchlist or platforms you can stream them on.

Quickly restart the Fire TV Stick

Fire TV Sticks and Fire TVs are mini computers, and as such they may malfunction and require a reboot from time to time. Hold it Circle and the Play/Pause button for five seconds and your Fire Stick will restart immediately. It’s much simpler than having to find the reboot option in the menu or physically disconnecting it from the wall.

Mirror your iPhone to Fire TV

While Fire TVs and Fire TV Sticks can mirror/cast Android phones natively, iPhones have to jump through hoops to do the same. Just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean it’s not possible. You’ll need to download a paid app like Screen Mirroring for Fire TV to do this for you. (There are other free alternatives (AirScreen, DoCast, LetsView), but they will limit you in some way by placing ads or setting a time restriction until you pay for the app.) To begin, after selecting your app, hold down the button. Home for five seconds and select the Mirroring option that appears. Next, open the mirroring app and make sure you’re on the same network as your Fire TV. Then follow the app’s on-screen instructions.

You don’t need a Fire TV remote to operate your Fire TV

Losing your remote (or buying a used TV without a remote) doesn’t mean you’re screwed. There is a simple and free solution. Download the Amazon Fire TV app, which essentially turns your phone into a Fire TV remote, often with more options. You need to make sure you are on the same network as your TV to set this up. One of my favorite reasons to use this app over the physical remote is that you can type whatever you’re looking for into your phone rather than selecting each letter individually with the remote.

Watch Anything Virtually Free with Kodi

Kodi is a free, open-source media system that lets you reliably stream your entire media collection to any local device, like your Fire TV Stick. The problem is that it takes a little time to set it up, but don’t worry. I followed the steps in this tutorial to make the installation easier for you. Plex and Jellyfin are also good alternatives, as they’re easy to download from Amazon’s official app store (but see our coverage for their pros and cons).

Use your computer as Fire TV

If you want to watch your Fire TV on the go or don’t have a TV, it’s helpful to play it on your computer (Mac or PC), especially if you already have Kodi running on your Fire TV Stick. To set it up, you’ll need to install open source software like OBS Studio for it to work. But you’ll essentially have another method to watch your shows and movies.

Use your Fire TV Stick as a computer

You can access the web through your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick, and it’s surprisingly simple. Download the Amazon Silk app to your Fire TV or Stick and you can check email, social media, or do anything you do in a browser on your TV. And if the idea of ​​using your remote to type stresses you out, remember the Amazon Fire TV app I mentioned earlier, or you can get one of those cheap remotes for easy typing. If you’re really good at it, you can get to the point where you create shortcuts on the home page of your favorite websites as if they were apps.

Use your Alexa speaker as a hands-free remote control

Sometimes we have our hands full or we can’t find the remote or our phones in time before the preview for the next episode ruins the show for us. If you have an Alexa speaker nearby, simply use voice commands to tell Alexa, for example, to “pause the TV.”

Listen to TV with your Bluetooth headphones

Many people notice the Bluetooth functionality on TV sticks and don’t think much of it, but it’s a powerful feature. You can connect your wireless keyboard to do searches, connect game controllers to play games, connect your surround sound or portable speakers to it, and, most personally useful, connect your Bluetooth headphones to listen to shows without disturbing anyone else you live with. Go to Settings > Bluetooth controllers and devices > Other Bluetooth devices > Addand it will find any device in sync mode.

See who’s at your door right on your TV

If you have an Alexa-enabled camera, there’s a way to make it appear on your Fire TV. Some of these brands include: Nest, Arlo, Blink, Wyze, Logitech, Ecobee, TP-Link, Aqara, Honeywell, Kami, Reolink, Zmodo, Amcrest, Canary, Vivint and SwitchBot. They won’t all have the same level of features and on-screen options, so it’s best to see what your brand is capable of in Fire TV and how to configure each one correctly.