Having a Fire TV Stick at home can come in handy at any time, whether it’s for when we go on a trip and we’re not lucky enough to have a smart TV, or even if our TV is so old that we can’t count with some of the most used apps today such as streaming platforms, to listen to music or virtual assistants.
However, one of the drawbacks that you could find in these small devices that Amazon sells is its operating system. Specifically, in each and every one of the Fire TV Stick models, we will find Fire OS, the software that has been integrated into those devices. Therefore, if you are used to others, as is the case with Android, it is time for you to discover how you can quickly change your OS to Android TV.
all requirements
Before going on to see each of the steps that we will have to follow and, of course, we will tell you later, it is necessary that you take into account a series of prerequisites. And it is that, if we do not comply with them, it will be better that we do not waste time trying. More than anything, because we will not be able to install Android TV on the Amazon device in any way. Therefore, these are the points to consider:
- The Amazon model has to be Fire TV Stick Lite or Fire TV Stick 3rd generation.
- You must have an Amazon Fire TV that has firmware version 7.2.7.3 or earlier.
- You must have an operating system that is capable of running live and without installation, as might be the case with Linux Mint.
- Micro USB cable so that we can connect the device to the PC.
- Know about ROM, TWRP and ADB, basic concepts of the Android development world.
Install Android TV step by step
The process will be more or less difficult depending on the concepts that we master and if, at some point, we have heard of LineageOS, an open source Android fork. Therefore, once we are clear about the prerequisites that we have given you, it will be time to take action.
First of all, we will have to be able to unlock the bootloader of the Amazon device. To achieve this, you will have to run the Linux installation on your PC and install these softwares: python3, PySerial, PyUSB, adb and fastboot.
After this, check that, in your operating system (if you use Linux) you have ModemManager disabled. Once this is done, we can start working with the Fire TV Stick. Therefore, we will have to open the browser that we normally use and download the following file. Specifically, it is a compressed folder that offers us the necessary codes to unlock the device’s bootloader. At that time, we will have to follow these steps:
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Run the command ‘sudo ./bootrom-step.sh’.
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Connect the Fire TV to your PC with the micro USB and run the command ‘./fastboot-step.sh’
- Now, you will have to install LineageOS 18.1 for Fire TV from Github.
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And if you download the Open GApps (selected ARM, Android 11 and tvmini), you will get Google apps on the Fire TV.
- When you have all the files, transfer them to the Amazon device.
- Next, connect the Fire TV to the TV and boot it into recovery mode to access TWRP. Press the left arrow key on a keyboard that is connected via the micro USB port during power on.
- Inside, it will be necessary to wipe the Data, System and Cache partitions.
- Then with TWRP, find the files that we had transferred and click on the LineageOS 18.1 file. Then, flash the Google apps file as well.
- Lastly, restart your device to start enjoying Android TV.
