The Fire TV Stick has been one of the best devices for making any television smart for years. Fire OS is based on Android , with a large layer of customization that Amazon installs on top. However, we do not have Google Services or the Play Store. However, you can now install Android TV on the Fire TV Stick 4K thanks to a port made by the community.
This port has the advantage that it allows you to use Android TV with Google services , in addition to keeping other Amazon apps such as Alexa and the Appstore installed with all its applications, so we can have the best of both worlds in a really cheap device .
First you have to unlock the bootloader
Specifically, this modification can be installed on Fire TV Stick 4K released since 2018. However, there are some models that seem to have DL-Mode disabled in BROM , so they cannot be unlocked. The community has been taking advantage of a bootrom exploit, called amonet, which allows some Fire series devices to be unlocked. That method was blocked on newer MediaTek SoCs than using Fire devices, like the Fire TV Cube . However, they managed to find another similar exploit for this chip two years ago and that allows you to unlock the bootloader and install TWRP.
The process of unlocking the bootloader (christened kamakiri ) is quite complex. To begin, it is necessary to do it from Linux and have a USB flash drive in FAT32. Subsequently, you have to download the package that contains the exploit and everything necessary for the installation, which occupies 1.5 GB, and includes the exploit that allows you to install it.
On a physical level it is also necessary to make modifications. Specifically, you have to disassemble the Fire TV Stick 4K and remove the heatsink from the main chips. When uncovered, you have to make a short to one of the pins that appear in the photo, being the most advisable to do it to DAT0 at one end, and another to ground. For the short it is enough to use a metal clip.
The finer what we use, the more precision we will have, being important that the part that is in contact with our finger is made of plastic. For example, we can expose the two metal tips of a paperclip, and grab it by the part where it is covered with plastic. While the short is being made, it is necessary to connect the stick to the computer, and the script will proceed to complete the installation automatically, where it will notify us when we can remove the clip.
After that, you can install Android TV
Once we have done that, we will already have TWRP installed and we can install the image with Android TV , where we only have to do a factory reset and log in with the Amazon account. In the following image we can see how the Google Play Store and the Amazon Appstore coexist.
After installation, it is recommended not to install recoveries or boots for FireOS , in addition to deactivating the OTAs so that an official version is not installed on top. The Android version that we will have will be 7.1.2, where everything works, such as Alexa, Amazon, Google Play, Magisk, Xposed, Widevine for Netflix and others in 4K, Mirroring, etc. The only thing that doesn’t work is the Google Assistant and Google Voice Search, although we already have Alexa for that. We can also install Kodi on the Fire TV Stick , something we could already do with FireOS.
