5 Tips and Tricks Fire TV Stick Owners Must Know

1. STOP AUTOMATIC PLAYBACK WHILE BROWSING

When you turn on your Fire TV, the home screen shows you a series of tiles with recommended content and recently watched series. Now, when you navigate down to browse, trailers start playing after a short while as soon as you stop navigating. This distracts from the real goal, which is browsing.

You can disable the automatic playback of recommended content in the Fire TV settings. Navigate to “User Settings” and select the “Recommended Content” option. Here you can turn off the annoying trailers and movie snippets or just the “Auto Audio Play” on the home screen.

2. USE YOUR SMARTPHONE AS A REMOTE CONTROL

It always happens that you can’t find the small remote control? No problem. You can simply download the free Fire TV remote control as an app (Android & iOS) on your smartphone or tablet. That way you can watch a movie even if you can’t find the remote control. If you still have the first-generation Fire TV Stick without voice input, you will benefit twice. The app can also be used to search for movies or apps via voice command.

3. THIS TRICK SOLVES MOST OF YOUR PROBLEMS

If your Fire TV Stick is juddering or not playing content properly, you can restart it. This will usually solve the problem. You can either do this in the settings under “My Fire TV” and “Restart” or you can press the big round select button along with the play/pause button for a few seconds. Your stick will now reboot.

4. FULL CONTROL WITH ALEXA

To activate Alexa, press the microphone button at the top of the remote – on the latest models it’s the blue button with a white circle, on older models and the Fire TV Stick Lite it’s black with a white microphone icon. After a short beep, give the voice command. Meanwhile, press and hold the corresponding button. Alexa then executes the instruction – for example:

“Search (movie or series title)!”

“Play the trailer!” (only possible if a movie or series is already selected).

“Start (movie or series title)!”

“Fast forward (number) seconds/ minutes!”

“Rewind (number) seconds/ minutes!”

“Pause!”

“Play the next episode!”

“Play the content from the beginning!”

5. SAVE SPACE AND WATCH TV ON YOUR PC MONITOR

The Amazon Fire TV Stick uses an ordinary HDMI interface to bring data from streaming providers to the TV. Hence, the TV becomes the screen. So it doesn’t matter to Fire TV whether it is a TV or a PC monitor. If you only have limited space, you can simply plug the Fire TV Stick into the HDMI slot of your monitor and start streaming videos.

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You’re thinking about upgrading your Fire TV Stick to the latest version, but you’re not sure if it’s worth it. Then read the CNET article “Best Fire TV Stick in 2023: Fire Stick 4K Max, Lite, Fire TV Cube and More”

Be also sure to check out our range of Amazon Fire TV Sticks on Smartspeakers!