10 AMAZING Hacks For Your Amazon Fire TV Stick!

if you went out and bought one of the 4k versions of your fire stick and then you're feeling like maybe you're not getting 4k resolution that's a very frustrating thing and holding down the middle button on your remote and the down button for five seconds then letting go and hitting the menu button will bring up a special developer option panel that will help you confirm what it is you're seeing on screen there are two options up at the top that you can enable the first one allows you to see some basic statistics on how your fire stick is performing and i especially like the rssi that shows up this will help you diagnose wi-fi issues and if you just leave that on screen while content is playing and then you see the rssi drop below minus 75 dbm then you might want to have a look at how your wi-fi is situated but if you enable the second option and then you start content within any of your streaming services you should see a little information block pop up on screen and give you not just the information about the resolution but also some information about audio output which can help you diagnose some of those issues as well hello automators thanks for tuning in again i'm brian from automate your life and we will be automating your television today in a way that allows you to get so much more out of your amazon fire stick and even i was a little surprised at how far i could go so as we go through today's video i'll be building to bigger and better features and by the end of this you should have things like what is essentially unlimited memory actually be able to use the internet browser on your fire stick play retro games with friends or even better yet play luna anywhere in the world your music and sound experiences will change entirely and you'll be able to load almost any application you use on your phone or tablet today all that and much more as i give these little tips throughout each segment regarding that little trick at the start of today's video for ensuring you're actually getting those resolutions or features you expect like dolby vision or dolby atmos there is a few display settings that you can modify but for the most part if you just leave them to what they were originally set at your content should come in the best way it can on your tv however your tv settings can be really impactful to this and one of the things you'll want to check is whether or not your hdmi input for your fire stick has some things like uhd turned on or if there are any other settings that may be restricting video or audio quality there the physical hardware that we get with the fire stick appears to be pretty plain but it's built on the android operating system even though it's called fire os what being built on android has meant for this type of device is that we can really hack the hardware in some really amazing ways there are a couple of purchases that i'm going to recommend because this absolutely opens up a ton of options but if you don't want to purchase these things you can still do a lot of what i'll show you going forward and i will give you some of the workarounds as we go the first purchase is this micro usb otg adapter this is a pretty common thing for people to buy with fire sticks because it gives you the option to power another device and it gives us an opportunity to buy other things to plug into it and that's where our second purchase will be a hub now there's a few that i've had but this one is really inexpensive and it works really well for a lot of reasons it has three usb ports and will be powered by our otg adapter i've also bought this combo style but to be honest i don't like it as much because it's not as clean and because it's missing this fancy ethernet port on the u-green hub my installation of this took seconds and just a few steps i turned off and unplugged the fire tv stick from the power and tv i unplugged the micro usb cable from the fire stick i plugged in the micro usb cable into the female side of the otg adapter and then i plugged in the hub's usb port into the adapter as well now what i have are three open usb ports and there are many types of devices we can now plug in one of the biggest problems with fire sticks is their storage capacity and the ability to drop media files or other file types onto the fire stick and then use them so one of the easiest and most likely things that you will have in your home are a ton of usb keys or jump drives so i filled this one up with a few different things from my pc and then i plugged it into the hub once my fire stick was powered on i went into the settings and down to my fire tv inside of there i could now see that i had some external storage available i could if i wanted to format that in order to use it as storage for additional apps now i would suggest that you look at something like a solid state drive if you're going to use it for apps and that would require actual powering of the drive in a separate outlet in most cases but i have tried usb flash drives and this kind of flash drive that takes a micro sd or an sd card i do get a warning that i can't use that one as internal storage but now i have all of this external storage and i did preload it with some fun stuff in order to use this well i downloaded an application called file explorer it's free and it does allow you to look inside that external storage as long as you choose to allow all of the permissions it's asking for that means you can play many types of media files and it can scan through the local network in your home to get other files and storage now i've shown you some methods for increasing your storage but in some cases you might just want to transfer a few files across and you don't want all of this hardware the application that i've found very useful for this is called files to tv files to tv has to be downloaded as an app both in the fire stick app store and then you have to get it on your phone as well and you'll choose send on your phone and then receive on the fire stick and then you're able to send pretty much anything from your phone over there and that file explorer app will help you to then find those i do know that many of you struggle staying connected to your home's wi-fi and one of the best things you can do for the health of your wi-fi network is to take streaming devices off of wi-fi so if you are struggling with wireless connectivity this hub gives us the option to turn our connection into a wired one i plugged it into the one gigabit ethernet port but again i had to do that with the device unplugged and turned off then once it gets turned back on head into your network settings and you see you've switched over to a wired connection one of the biggest problems i have with the fire sticks is that the remote really just gives us a few options for navigating and searching and using everything on our fire stick and for me i end up using the voice control but i know a lot of people aren't willing to do that or don't love that and i think every one of us have felt the frustration of typing in a password using this remote and dying of old age before we're done one great way to get around this is to use the fire tv app which you just download on your phone and you can set up on a new device very simply once you've downloaded that app and your fire stick is plugged in it should find the device automatically now that i've added this hub i can plug in both a keyboard and a mouse and many of the apps you will use will then have a mouse pointer that you can use as you would on any normal pc or mac and the keyboard will be able to type in to any field you open up so remember that password problem no more now if you use the wrong devices this option will take up two ports on that hub so might not be your preferred way of doing that and logitech who is the maker of this keyboard has some great options for combining their usb keyboards and mice into a single adapter but i actually think my favorite is this mini keyboard it's small and it has a rechargeable battery and there are many models available today but almost all of the buttons work exactly how you would expect them to there's a home button and there's even a button to open up the internet browser as well as and there's a back button and of course the keyboard can be used in any of those fields that you're going to search with it also has a mouse pad up at the top of it that you can use to move that mouse pointer around you can tap and then you can even scroll using two fingers on this pad and all of this is done on one usb port and it's done wirelessly the only gap i really saw here was that some of the applications didn't know how to use all of the buttons and i couldn't bring up amazon's voice assistant with it this would effectively leave us one usb port open and maybe you don't need the wireless keyboard or the extra storage and at any time you can remove those just make sure you unplug the fire stick because we're gonna need two ports for this next hack one great thing about the fire sticks is that they allow you to introduce bluetooth controllers to navigate around the interface but in a lot of cases when i've used my playstation 4 controllers or based on what i've got back from comments from you if you're using xbox one controllers or other bluetooth controllers you're finding latency in things like games and so am i so instead i took a few different controllers and tested them out with this hub solution this is a nintendo switch pro controller or at least a look-alike one and when i plugged this in this became easily the best controller i've ever had on a fire stick i also tried these cheap usb super nintendo look-alike controllers which cost me like ten dollars or something five years ago and while i'm sure they're more expensive these days plugging these in gave me a few ideas it was really easy to use either of those controllers to play final fantasy 3 which there is an app for and there are many games in the app store that you will suddenly have access to that will work really well so you can now just sit and roll through the app store and i'm sure you'll find something you love but i have some of these usb controllers because in the past i've bought emulator boxes that are built and pre-sold with some of these controllers those are fine but they cost usually a hundred to two hundred dollars and i'm sitting here looking at a ton of available storage and usb ports so i downloaded an application called retro arch and while i won't specifically say the name of the company that i'm playing retro video games from because they would probably shut a video down like this i can tell you that you will be able to find a lot of what are called roms for old video games that you remember loving so i opened up retro arch after having plugged in my nintendo switch pro controller i chose a core which is what's called an emulator and for those who don't know what an emulator is it's software that is able to be just like one of those old systems so i chose it from the list and then i configured the controllers in the settings i had to walk through mapping the buttons on this controller to what they would have been in the game and then i had to save the configuration for those controllers and save the configuration for retro arch in general it's very important to save that configuration so keep that in mind but from there i did a quick test of playing a few games and then i repeated the process with one of those usb super nintendo look-alike controllers then i was able to play two-player games and depending on the rom and the system you're using you could get up to three players playing a game using this hub you may or may not have noticed this in today's video but if you haven't i have been using a computer monitor for all of these demos first of all to do that i had to get this dvi to hdmi adapter to plug in which is a very simple and inexpensive purchase and if you want to use something like a computer monitor it means you don't have a speaker this actually leads me to an option that many of you might be very interested in which is an hdmi switcher like this which would allow you to go between your fire tv stick and your regular pc or computer input anyways as i said i really didn't find the bluetooth interface super useful for game controllers but this is somewhere i do find the bluetooth option very useful you can try bluetooth speakers and see if your specific speaker will introduce some latency it's likely that you will feel like the sound is always a little bit behind and unfortunately with bluetooth speakers and the audio features on these fire sticks you're not going to find any way to get around that if you do get latency however for me i have found much better performance with earbuds or headsets and i've even used the echo buds as well as other bluetooth earbuds just directly connected through the bluetooth option in the fire stick this gives you a way to use an old monitor or another older television with no speakers and create kind of a private viewing experience for someone of course the best feature for anyone who wants to avoid using their television speakers is the home theater option and this is an easy process so i feel like i can show you it briefly but if you do need a full walkthrough of this feature there's a video link in the description below that will help for this you will need an echo echo dot or an echo studio if you want you can use those in pairs and create a 2.0 speaker system with them or you can buy an echo sub and then two of those speakers and create a 2.1 speaker system for myself i'm finding a single echo sub and a single echo studio are a very powerful and well balanced system to set up one of these home theater systems head into the miss a application log in using the same amazon account you use when you set up your echo speakers and your fire tv stick and then head to the devices page tap on the plus and get to the prompt that allows you to create a home theater group then choose the speakers that you would like alongside that fire stick and amazon will pretty much do the rest once complete you'll probably get a little demo of your new sound quality and if you do find some latency in the way the speakers are performing there are some options within the audio settings of your fire stick that allow you to synchronize your speakers with the video content and remember way back when i showed you at the start of today's video that you could see the audio information well you can review that again to make sure what kind of audio you're getting is what you want but inside of the settings for your audio you can also find this option to determine if you will get features like dolby vision or dolby atmos with your setup and if you want more information on things like getting dolby atmos working then you'll want to see this video where i walk through everything i had to do in order to get that feature working so we have lots of options for video and audio and i'm showing you how to play some games plus we've added these little peripherals to make the experience better and i'm going to head a little further down the video game route but this next trick will actually give you the option to get different content types and even different applications working like you were in another country the application that you would go and get is called expressvpn and i've tested this out and it seems very effective within the entire fire tv system that's because once i've signed up for a monthly service with them which does cost i can choose where i would like my internet connection to be from for those of you who don't know what a vpn is it's something that can help with privacy depending on how it's done and in a lot of cases it can make it look like you are in a different country so let me show you what i did here and what it quickly gave me access to which is incredible my fire tv is set up in an account that i created on amazon.com now i'm up in canada so normally i would create an account on amazon.ca i have entire guides on how to deal with this but if you're struggling to make an account like this then feel free to leave comments below and i'll help you out you will also find links to guides for getting your account converted or creating a new one in the description below anyways using this american account to set up the fire tv and my echo speakers has given me the ability to download applications like luna that's amazon's new cloud-based gaming service and it's an interesting offer that i think a lot of people would like to try so i downloaded that application and then i went in and i couldn't use any of the games or sign up for a trial or anything but i will tell you that my hub solution and the nintendo switch pro controller allowed me to get past the need to buy a luna controller so what i did is i went into that expressvpn application turned on the vpn and made it look like i was in the us then i created this shortcut to jump over to luna right away and suddenly i could sign up for a trial with a credit card on my amazon.com account within moments i was playing devil may cry 5 and there wasn't any latency or lag or any problems with this and i assume that most folks across the pond away from north america are going to struggle with latency a little bit more but it was a very smooth experience and very enjoyable from there i was able to go into other applications with that vpn on and look like i was from the us and get different content so and it might be really interesting for you to know that netflix in canada still has the office anyways this will potentially give you access to a lot more content and a lot of different apps on the fire stick speaking of getting more apps i'm going to show you the best way i think there is to pretty much put any app on your fire stick but before we do that you need to know how to manage some of these applications when they are misbehaving or just to fix up your interface a little bit on the fire stick so if you have an app that isn't quite working right and you come in and out of it a couple of times but it just keeps screwing up then there are two things you can do head into the applications in settings then manage installed applications and find the name of the app that is misbehaving you can clear the data or the cache and i will call that the nuclear option as if you have things saved in it like an account you're blowing that away when you remove the data but this can be a way to cause an app to kind of hard reset the other thing you can do that is much easier is to force stop the application and then to hit that little launch button this closes the application fully and allows you to get it started from the very start again as you get more applications there is an option to go into the my apps section and if you hit the little menu button there you can rearrange and bring your favorite apps up to the top in order to have them show up in the quick menu on the home page but if you go into the app store there are a few options for finding applications including the basic search however i know for many of you that you will have multiple fire sticks and so it's easy to pull those apps across from one fire stick to another by looking for this all apps option in the store it's in that area that you will see apps that you haven't put on this fire stick but you have on other ones in your account so now we have all these options for finding and managing applications and this means we can really expand what type of applications we will try and remember earlier in the video i said that fire os was based on android this is great news for us because it means a lot of android applications will work and i know many of you have an iphone but let's be honest most apps are available on both iphone or ios and android so you should find a version available for you so we're going to do something called side loading in order to do that head to the app store and search for an application called downloader that application allows you to paste urls directly into it but i think it's easier to just do a search for the app you're looking for to do this just put in the name of the app and then i would say write apk after that of course if you have one of these a fancy keyboards this just became a lot easier and what i want to make sure of is that you feel secure downloading one of these apks because it's like downloading an app that wasn't verified as safe by google in their play store or amazon in their app store so there's only a few sites that i download apks from but once you find an app that you would like it's a few clicks to bring that application onto your fire stick the first time you do this the downloader app will ask for permission to be able to install apps and you do have to grant that the first time once you've done that the downloader app will work through the installation process of your new apk and it will even prompt you to delete the apk after it's done which you can do once it's installed to keep your memory clean or less memory used on the fire stick keep in mind that many of these apps won't work totally right and this is a rabbit hole that you can go down now and delete apps as you need or move them around as you find them useful and you can truly do some amazing things in your home with your television and i have even more hidden tips and tricks on these fire sticks up on screen now in that video so go check that out it'll expand further what you can do with these great little streaming devices in your home otherwise thanks for watching today and of course don't hate automate

Channel: Automate Your Life

Views: 550,497

Keywords: amazon fire tv stick, hidden fire stick features, amazon fire tv stick 4k, amazon fire stick, firestick, fire tv stick, best firestick apps, firestick tips, fire tv stick lite, amazon firestick hidden features, fire tv stick setup, firestick setup guide, firestick buffering, amazon fire tv stick hidden features, automate your life, fire tv stick 4k, fire stick, firestick 4k, speed up firestick, fire stick hacks 2022, fire stick hub, best firestick build

Id: nLrzAlnLcPA

Length: 24min 42sec (1482 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022