Amazon Fire TV Tips for Best Performance

Amazon Fire TV Tips for Best Performance

Amazon Fire TV Stick performance issues can take the form of:
Lagging
App crashes
Reduced video quality
Lower frame rate
Slow-motion video
Out-of-sync sound
Long buffering time


Many of these tweaks will make a minuscule impact on their own, but together they add up to a significant power boost and can speed up your device. Please see the below steps to improve the performance of an Amazon Fire TV Stick to get it running like new again.

Power source:


Use the charging cable and power adapter provided by the manufacturer. Although you can plug the USB cable into your TV’s USB port or a spare laptop port, they have a much lower output than a wall socket and will throttle the Fire TV’s performance.

Restart:

Most people keep their Fire TV Sticks plugged in and running all the time, even when they aren’t using them. Performing an occasional restart can help unclog a struggling Fire TV Stick and breathe new life into it. You can either unplug the device and plug it back in again, or restart from Fire OS. For the latter, follow these instructions:

Hold down the 
Home (house) button.
Select 
Settings Device.
Select 
Restart.

Uninstall unused apps or add-ons:

Apps and add-ons take up space in memory and can hog up resources. We suggest uninstalling any apps you do not use, as well as removing any Kodi add-ons not being used. To uninstall Fire TV apps, do the following:

Hold down the 
Home (house) button.
Select 
Settings > Applications.
Select 
Manage Installed Applications.
Select the app you want to uninstall.
Click 
Uninstall, then Uninstall again to confirm.

NOTE:
 Certain apps come pre-installed on Fire TV and cannot be uninstalled. See below for how to uninstall pre-installed apps.

Force stop unused apps:

Unused apps that don’t have the uninstall option, or apps that you’d like to keep but just don’t use very much, can be stopped so they no longer run in the background. To do so, follow the exact same steps as you would uninstall the app as laid out above. This time, instead of selecting Uninstall, choose Force stop. It might not be clear that anything has happened at first, but the app will no longer be weighing down your Fire Stick.

Clear data and cache:

In the menu where you see the Uninstall and Force stop options, you’ll also see Clear data and Clear cache. Perform these actions in the order they appear Clear data, then Clear cache. This will also prevent apps you’ve forced stopped from automatically reloading.

Disable unused features:

The Fire TV Stick has quite a bit of bloatware enabled by default. By disabling a few “features” in the settings, you can free up more resources for Kodi and other apps. Turning off these features can also improve your privacy. Here’s how to do it:

Hold down the 
Home (house) button.
Select 
Settings > Applications.
Select 
Collect App Usage Data and choose to Turn off.
Select 
Prime Photos, toggle off Allow guest connections and disable Access Prime Photos, assuming you don’t use this feature.
Select 
App store. Here you can disable Automatic Updates, which downloads and installs new versions of your apps in the background. Note, however, that you should still update your apps regularly in order to receive important security updates. We recommend disabling this only temporarily to boost performance when needed. 
You can also squeeze out a bit more performance by disabling 
In-app purchases and Notifications.
Select 
Gamecircle. Toggle off Share your GameCircle Nickname and Whispersync for Games.

Turn off data monitoring:

Data monitoring can be a useful tool to make sure you don’t exceed your internet service provider’s monthly data allowance but keeping track of downloads and uploads uses a small number of system resources that can be better applied elsewhere. To disable data monitoring, do the following:

Hold down the 
Home (house) button.
Select 
Settings > Preferences.
Select 
Data monitoring.
Click 
Data monitoring to toggle it Off.

App notifications:

App notifications can impact performance to a slight degree. Fire TV allows users to disable notifications entirely or on an app-by-app basis. Access your notification settings by doing the following:

Hold down the 
Home (house) button.
Select 
Settings > Preferences.
Select 
Notification Settings.
Toggle on 
Do not interrupt by clicking on it or click App Notifications to toggle off notifications from individual apps.

Factory reset:

This is a ‘last resort’ if you’ve tried everything else on this list and just aren’t getting the performance you need out of your Fire TV Stick. This will uninstall any apps that didn’t come pre-installed and change all your settings back to default, so remember to go through this list again afterwards to change them back.

Hold down the 
Home (house) button.
Select 
Settings > Device.
Scroll to the bottom and select 
Reset to Factory Defaults.
Confirm by selecting 
Reset and wait for the process to finish.


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