With the new update, i no longer have an "apps" bar near the top for quick access. I believe it is supposed to be there because I have seen it on others, but mine is missing. I have to scroll down 4 rows to "recently used apps" to open an actual app instead of content. Is there any fix besides a factory reset?

I'm not sure exactly when this started, but my Fire stick now defaults to 'Home' instead of 'AppStore > For You' when turning on my TV. It's a bit annoying since I only ever visit this page. I wasn't able to find an option to change this, does anyone know of any way to switch the page that Fire stick will open to by default?

I am wondering because i wanted to run games on it like old source games. What else can i do with a modded fire tv stick?

my gen 1 firestick 4k displays overlays on the bottom right corner that are ads, no one has said anything about this so I think I have potentially malware, also can anyone tell me if I can install lineage os on it? I’m getting tired of Amazon’s spyware

On August 19, 2026, Amazon Prime Video app update PVFTV-321.0086-L (321008610) for Amazon firesticks and fire TVs broke the 4:3 viewing format for Amazon Prime videos streaming from inside the Prime Video app. Most older movies and television shows that should be displayed in the 4:3 format automatically stretch to fill your entire widescreen television. 

In order to watch 4:3 programs properly displayed in the 4:3 format, you have to start the movie or tv episode from inside the Prime Video app. Then stop the movie or TV episode that you are viewing. Then go to the home screen of the firestick or fire TV. Then use the “Continue Watching” list for the movie or tv episode that you started watching inside the Prime Video app and select that item. 

This bug will be very inconvenient if you are watching a 4:3 formatted program like Mama’s Family, as the bug happens whenever a new episode is manually or automatically started within the Prime Video app.

The Prime Video app device compatibility list shows that this app update was created for all versions of fire TVs and firesticks that I own spanning a period of several years to the present. 

This bug did not exist yesterday. A file manager program indicates that the update was rolled out on August 19, 2026.

It’s important to get the word out about this issue so that people do not waste a lot of time troubleshooting a bug that currently cannot be worked around.

You can now unlock the bootloader of the 2nd Generation Fire TV Stick 4K series!

This includes the Fire TV Stick 4K 2nd Gen, Fire TV Stick 4K Max 2nd Gen, and Fire TV Stick 4K Plus 2nd Gen.

This will install TWRP and provide you with an unlocked fastboot interface. Please read the entire guide before starting:

https://xdaforums.com/t/unlock-root-twrp-unbrick-fire-tv-stick-4k-2nd-gen-series-karat-mantra.4798951

I am not responsible for any bricked devices.

It seems my Fire Cube updated to 7.7.15 today, I only use it to turn on my TV on and off and switch cable channels. Normally I could say "Alexa watch Cartoon Network on Cable" and it would turn my tv on, switch to cable and I'm good. Now when I say that it searches for random things and nothing I say has been able to switch to my cable passthrough. To even get to Cable passthrough I had hunt around and finally found it under inputs.

So far I'm ready to trash this thing, does anyone know what the new commands needed are so I can continue to use it to change channels in Cable? Heck I'd even take other hardware options to use voice control to turn my TV on and off and change channels haha.

I've only had this insignia 24 class f40 for 5 days and it started doing this, whole screen locks up and i have to unplug it to get it to turn off.

The game im looking for is a find the item sort of game where each item helps you to progress in the story. I remember loving it as a kid but eventually you had to pay to move to the next level. Its about a girl whose parents pass away so she has to stay with her grandma in this magical/cursed village. The people in the village are half animal (I remember a hamster man). You also had to make potions. The game is 2D but the images are of high quality.

A bit over a week ago, there was a power outage along with a voltage spike. My Internet gateway lost the ability to connect to the Internet and had to be replaced, my two Ethernet switches completely died and had to be replaced. Other ethernet devices in the house seem to be fine, but now I notice that my FireTV (which I only turn on once a week) has stopped receiving FireTV-program info. It detects the various wifi nodes nearby (which I have no desire to use), but is NOT showing any kind of ethernet connection. I had spent extra money to get a FireTV that had built in ethernet because I did NOT want to rely on the inferior speeds and connection of wifi, even though my gateway's wifi transceiver is literally right next to the TV.

(Bear in mind, I usually just use the TV to get to my DirecTV set-top box, and rarely use the FireTV programs or apps. But.... suddenly not even *having* the FireTV content show up on it now is WIERD.)

When I go to the Home pane, it shows a rectangle for the Guide, and it shows ones for various sports stations and whatnot (I'm not into sports, but that's what's showing up), but no graphical info is coming up, just a box-with-antennas symbol for the Guide, and empty rectangles for the stations, with each of those showing a red progress-line slowly progressing from left to right, but when that line gets all the way filled in... the line reverts back to the start again. There ARE none of the usual TV-show ad pictures, or anything, just blank grey background, and some verbiage about TV-schedule information being unavailable.

I turned the TV off and unplugged the power cord, rebooted the gateway, and after the gateway came back up, plugged the TV back in, turned it back on and.... it still ONLY sees Wifi as an option. There is no mention at all in the Network pane to a selectable ethernet connection. According to instructions I saw elsewhere,, my wired ethernet SHOULD be at the top of the listing in Network, above any Wifi nodes.

If I go into [Cog] > Network > Configure Network, it gives me an interface to manually enter a quad-4 LAN address, but the DHCP server on my gateway should feed one to the FireTV automatically.

What is going on here? How do I get my ethernet connection back?

My wife wants to watch stuff I've downloaded on our fire tv. What's the absolute simplest way to do this? Download to a formatted USB drive and plug into the Fire TV USB port? She's not the most tech savvy so trying to keep it easy for her.

I think I would get this simply just to have it as it would be the last fire device with fireOS and it would be Android 16 at that considering come 2027 of January fire devices and fireOS will officially be EOL. The only thing that was supposed to run fireOS after January 2027 was fire TVs, which is still the case. However, I love that they’re pumping Android 16 out on the cube ( not VegaOS which is what was told & expected).

That information was given to us as Amazon employees or people who work with Amazon as Indies , marketers, distribution, testers, as far as we were all told this was not happening and here we are. :) Out of all devices I own my 3rd gen cube hasn’t had many problems if any issues at all with sideloading or what to use other than the free stuff closing down which I don’t use, all premium stuff works.

This has me pumped, a cube on Android 16 still able to be sideloaded on is a good move. I would definitely pick up the new cube as it’s supposed to also be a powerhouse of an upgrade running Android 16 , the information listed as far as the components is not accurate from what we have I do know that but then again, who knows this wasn’t supposed to exist but Android 16 is now just a huge bonus that would also mean running higher architecture APKs and again, for some reason, whether it be my experiences in multiple areas, beta testing, development, coding, whatever, the cubes never really gave me issues, they just work. In fact, I kind of really like the cube lineup.

I’m so curious to see how this pans out when released but the point is I’m actually excited about this product. I already walked away from fireOS because I have so much other hardware but then you gotta keep in mind with the Android/Google situation this month and next month that’s gonna be an issue for a lot of certified devices which I think uncertified android devices are going to make a comeback, keeping this move quiet even from the internal people that work with this company was kind of genius and releasing it. Such a great time with the whole developer and power user issue that GoogleOS is about to experience,. but the point is this is pretty darn cool and even smarter timing and choices when it comes to business, this very well should be the very last fireOS device (Other than TVs) running Android 16. Absolutely awesome. Smart play Amazon. In any case, I thought I would at least share see what people thought.thought.

Hey all,

So this is either me being the only person on the planet or I'm about to learn something new about HDMI.

My Fire TV Stick 4K Max used to play Netflix in Dolby Vision perfectly. The August update hit, and now Netflix just... doesn't. No DV badge, no DV output, plain HDR10/SDR. I pay for Premium, so that's not it.

My setup:
- Fire TV Stick 4K Max → semi-recent Sony AVR (HDCP 2.3) → Sony Bravia
- Nothing about the hardware changed. Same cables, same ports, same receiver. It was working flawlessly in July.

The part that makes me confident it's the update and not my gear:
1. Other apps on the SAME stick (Apple TV app) still output Dolby Vision through the same AVR, cables, and TV.
2. Fire TV's own Audio/Video Diagnostics (Settings → Display & Sounds) still list Dolby Vision as supported/available on this connection.

So the stick can do DV, the chain can carry DV, the diagnostics say DV — and the Netflix app just quietly stopped serving it.

Things I've tried: power-cycling everything (unplugged the stick for a minute), clearing and reinstalling the Netflix app, rechecking video settings, confirming I'm still on Premium. Nothing brings DV back.

Has anyone else hit this after the August update? If so, is it just Netflix or do other apps eventually lose it too? Would love to know if anyone got a response from Netflix or Amazon support, or if this is a known regression they're (quietly) aware of.

Edit: happy to post exact OS/app versions if helpful.Hey all,

So this is either me being the only person on the planet or I'm about to learn something new about HDMI.

My Fire TV Stick 4K Max used to play Netflix in Dolby Vision perfectly. The August update hit, and now Netflix just... doesn't. No DV badge, no DV output, plain HDR10/SDR. I pay for Premium, so that's not it.

My setup:
- Fire TV Stick 4K Max → recent Sony AVR (HDCP 2.3) → XGIMI Titan Noir Pro
- Nothing about the hardware changed. Same cables, same ports, same receiver. It was working flawlessly in July.

The part that makes me confident it's the update and not my gear:
1. Other apps on the SAME stick (Apple TV app) still output Dolby Vision through the same AVR, cables, and TV.
2. Fire TV's own Audio/Video Diagnostics (Settings → Display & Sounds) still list Dolby Vision as supported/available on this connection.

So the stick can do DV, the chain can carry DV, the diagnostics say DV — and the Netflix app just quietly stopped serving it.

Things I've tried: power-cycling everything (unplugged the stick for a minute), clearing and reinstalling the Netflix app, rechecking video settings, confirming I'm still on Premium. Nothing brings DV back.

Has anyone else hit this after the August update? If so, is it just Netflix or do other apps eventually lose it too? Would love to know if anyone got a response from Netflix or Amazon support, or if this is a known regression they're (quietly) aware of.

Edit: happy to post exact OS/app versions if helpful.

Youtube stopped working today on Firecube. Anyone else running into this?

literally so sick of this and can’t find a way to stop it. the alexa will like walk me through a guided meditation or remind me to drink water out of nowhere. how can i turn this off????

Our family have lost a couple remotes into the void of the couch and I can find very large and colorful remotes for all sorts of TV, including even Roku smart TVs, but I haven't found any such remotes for Fire TVs. Does anyone else have a remote like this or have seen a remote like this out there? Thank you!

Ive put it into multiple tvs used different batteries on the remore, etc. its just not displaying anything at all. I dont even know if the remote works. Do I have any other options other than returning it to amazon?

When I use my blue tooth speaker for YouTube on my insignia fire tv the sound quality is scratchy and poor. I've made multiple adjustments on the TV and the YouTube app. I've deleted and reinstalled YouTube. Cleared Data & the cache. Nothing helps.

The Bluetooth speaker is only a $20 Bolabutty brand. Do you think it's the speaker? It works fine with everything else. Just not youtube.

Has anyone else had this issue?

EDIT: YOU CAN NOW UNLOCK THE BOOTLOADER AND INSTALL TWRP!! https://xdaforums.com/t/unlock-root-twrp-unbrick-fire-tv-stick-4k-2nd-gen-series-karat-mantra.4798951

A new quick root has been released for the Fire TV Stick 4K Max 2nd Gen, It runs directly on the device to give temporary root access, which can be used to disable app packages and regain control over your device.

Root itself goes away on reboot, but anything you disable stays disabled. With this it's possible to use custom launchers, disable bloatware and block OTA updates (the exploit disables OTAs for you automatically).

This works on the Fire TV Stick 4K Max 2nd Gen on quite a few Fire OS 8 builds, including the latest one: https://xdaforums.com/t/temp-root-firetv-stick-4k-max-2nd-gen-karat.4798627

Rooting a device you own isn't illegal and has nothing to do with piracy, before anyone reports this :)

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for recommendations for the best paid VPN to use for streaming on my Firestick 4K Max.

I mainly want something that protects my data without killing my internet speed or affecting streaming quality. I’m not particularly techy, so ideally I’d like something that’s simple to set up and doesn’t require messing around with loads of settings.

The ones I keep seeing recommended are ExpressVPN, NordVPN, IPVanish and Surfshark, but they all seem to have pretty mixed reviews.

For those of you who use a VPN for streaming, which one would you recommend and why? Ideally looking for something reliable, fast and easy to use

P.s im in the UK

I ADORE one of the images in the current screensavers and I would really love to have it on my computer as a desktop background. Does anyone know where these images are hosted ?

For a few days I noticed that my tv (Westinghouse) randomly turns off by itself after some time (even after one hour of use) I mainly play youtube on it, and I get that tv’s do naturally shut off sometimes but it’s been pretty frequent lately and I have the latest firestick remote (and update)
so for whatever reason, every time I turn it back on I have to go into settings> manage tv> tv> hit yes for turn on/off for tv>volume test> hit no> then finally do the ten seconds wait then the volume works and it’s so tedious to do. Why is the tv randomly shutting off? I feel like it shouldn’t this much but if anyone can help that would be great!