Fire TV hardware will be able to sideload apps again with an upcoming Android software update for Amazon’s streaming hardware after a previous patch blocked third-party apps.
Late last year, Amazon rolled out a series of software patches to its Fire TV hardware. On the surface, the Android update for the streaming devices contained the usual security patches and performance updates. It was later discoveredthat the update disabled sideloading on certain Fire TV devices, preventing third-party apps from being installed if they didn’t come from certified app stores.
Amazon recently commented on that aspect of its previous Android updates in a response to AFTV News. Amazon says sideload prevention is part of a bug in the update, and it wasn’t an intentional aspect of the patch.
If users attempted to install a third-party app, the Fire TV device would list an error and block the process. It didn’t appear to affect all Fire TV devices, though the issue was widespread enough to be considered intentional. According to Amazon, it wasn’t.
There was a bug in a recent Fire TV Settings update that caused the “Install unknown apps” list to appear incomplete or empty on some Fire TV devices. We have identified the cause and a fix will roll out in an upcoming Fire TV Settings update, installed automatically on affected devices over the coming week.
This comes as the company recently announced its latest Fire TV Stick, which runs on Vega OS – not Android. It also confirmed that all future Fire TV Stick devices would run Linux-based software in lieu of Google’s OS to achieve a better performance-to-power ratio.
In essence, existing Fire TV devices will seemingly be able to sideload apps again, but that likely won’t be the case for streaming hardware Amazon launches in the future. Amazon says the patch will roll out to affected devices “over the coming week.”
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