It now appears that Amazon is actively disabling these apps after they’ve been manually installed by customers via sideloading. Apart from denying these alternate launchers a place in the official Fire TV appstore, due to “overriding the native user experience”, Amazon had otherwise ignored these apps. However, that hasn’t stopped cleaver programmers, like FiredTV and FireStarter’s developers, from finding their own ways to force their launchers to work with the Fire TV. Despite the Fire TV’s operating system being built off of Android, the ability to use an alternate launcher on the device has always been disabled by Amazon from the beginning. If you don’t like the default look and feel of your Android device’s home screen, you can install a new one to completely replace the one put in place by the device’s manufacturer. This is damning evidence that the reason behind Amazon disabling FireStarter has nothing to do with its unconventional use of internal ADB connections, and everything to do with forcing you to use the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick their way.Īlternate launchers, also known as home screen replacement apps, have long been a part of the Android experience. FiredTV Launcher, another alternate home screen replacement app for the Fire TV, has also been blacklisted by Amazon and is now being automatically disabled. It turns out FireStarter isn’t the only app being disabled by the new 5.0.5.1 Fire TV and Fire TV Stick software update.

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