The Amazon Fire TV stick is among the best things you can buy to revive an aging TV. The Fire TV OS is packed with a lot of great features, and it's perfect to breathe a new life into your old TV by adding some smart features to it. The Fire TV stick's operating system comes with all the essential features you need out of the box, but there are a few advanced options that are hidden under developer options.
That's right, the Fire TV OS also has a hidden developer options menu like the one you have on Android phones. It includes an option that lets you sideload applications, along with some more advanced settings like ADB Debugging and Deep Sleep mode. You'll find these developer options on all Fire TV OS devices, including the Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Stick Lite, Fire TV Cube, and even TVs that run Fire TV OS. If you are wondering how to get to these settings, then follow the step-by-step guide below.
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Similar to how you access developer settings on Android
Accessing the hidden developer options on Amazon Fire TV, as we mentioned previously, is fairly simple. Here's how to do it in a few simple steps.
- Select the gear icon on your Fire TV's home screen to open Settings.
- Go to My Fire TV, and select About.
- Highlight the first option on the list, which is usually your device's name, and press the action button on your remote seven times.
- You'll now see a message confirming "You are now a developer," and it'll unlock the developer options in the previous menu.
If you're using a Fire OS television, then step 2 may refer to Device & Software instead, but the rest of the steps are the same.
The menu will remain there permanently unless you happen to reset your Fire TV. In some cases, a major software version upgrade can also hide it again. In such cases, just perform the steps mentioned above once again to unlock the developer options.
Bonus: Accessing Fire TV's built-in developer tools menu
Apart from the aforementioned developer options (which are vaguely reminiscent of the Android base of Fire OS), Amazon also ships a standalone developer tools menu with its Android fork. However, it's primarily aimed at app developers, which means accessing the menu and tinkering with the options is not recommended unless you really know what you are doing.
To invoke this menu, pick one of the following methods:
- Press and hold the Center (aka Action) button on your remote for a second, then, while holding down the Center button, press the Down button on the directional ring. After 3–4 seconds, release both buttons and press the Menu button.
- If you have the Amazon Fire Game Controller, then press and hold the A and Y buttons simultaneously for 5 seconds. Next, release the buttons and press the controller's Menu button.
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In case you have already configured ADB and your PC can communicate with the Fire TV, just run the following command:
adb shell am start com.amazon.ssm/com.amazon.ssm.ControlPanel
Provided everything goes smoothly, you should see the built-in Developer Tools menu of Fire TV.
Developer options on the Fire TV are quite useful
The menu offers a myriad of features compared to the barebone developer options. The System X-Ray and Advanced Options toggles, for example, can be used to show instantaneous system metrics on top of the screen as an overlay. On the other hand, the Developer Options entry here is meant for turning on recommendations from all third-party apps installed by the user. You can take a look at the Amazon Fire TV developer documentation to learn more.
That’s all you need to do to access the developer options on any Fire TV device. For most people, the primary reason to even access this menu is to sideload third-party apps from unknown sources. While a number of these install-helper tools are in Amazon's store, you'll need to enable the necessary option for unknown sources before you can actually install anything with it.