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.