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Try these top 5 tips for your Amazon Fire TV stick: improve performance, speed up your firestick, and stop buffering. If your Amazon Fire TV stick has started to slow down recently or is just not running as it should, here are some quick and easy ways to get it back up to speed and running like new.
How to Speed Up an Amazon Fire TV Stick
Top 5 Ways to Speed Up an Amazon Fire TV Stick
These top 5 tips and tricks should help to speed up your Amazon Fire TV stick and help to improve its performance.
1. Update Amazon Fire TV Stick Software
The first thing we’ll check is that you’re running the latest software version and to do that.
We need to go over to the settings on your Fire TV stick, which you reach by scrolling across the top and choosing “Settings”.
Then go across to “My Fire TV”, “About”, and down to “Check for Updates”.
You can then check your version on the right-hand side, and it’ll say when it was last checked and if it needs an update. It’s worth running the latest versions, especially if your stick is a year or so old and you’ve not known you’ve needed to update it.
You can also set up automatic updates for your apps so that they’re always running the latest release, under “Applications” and then down to the “AppStore“. And there we have “Automatic Updates” which you can switch to on (if it’s not already) so save you remembering to do this in the future.
And updates is the first way to help speed up your amazon fire stick.
2. Increase Storage on your Amazon Fire Stick
Next, you’ll want to check your available storage on your device.
So on the settings menu, if you head over to “My Fire TV” and “About” then “Storage”, you’ll see the internal storage available on the right of your screen.
If you’ve been installing a lot of apps, you may find that your storage is nearly at capacity. So it’s worth checking in here, and if it’s anything close to under 1 GB remaining, you’ll probably find that your device is slowing down.
So you can increase your storage. Or alternatively, you go back into your “Settings” and over to “Applications”.
You’ll find “Manage Installed Applications.”
Then you can go through all your apps to see how much space is being taken up, and you can also uninstall and remove any that you’re not currently using.
And this should clear up some space for you.
3. Quit Fire Stick Background Apps
Now similar to a computer or your iPhone (for example), you’ll also have apps running in the background, which could slow you up.
And these can be found and shut down using an app which you can find under the search, using the magnifying glass. And search for “Background App and Process List”.
Select the app, click on it, and “Download and Install“. And “Open”
This will basically identify all the apps that are still running in the background, so you can go ahead, click on these and ”Force Stop”. Don’t worry, this won’t delete or uninstall them from your device it’ll simply just shut them down.
Or alternatively, you can choose to “Close All Apps” on the top left-hand side of the screen if you’re not currently using any of them.
4. Virus Check Your Amazon TV Stick
You may also be interested to hear that you can virus check your tv stick too for viruses, malware and trojans or anything harmful to your device.
The virus scanner I use is a 3rd Party App, so you’ll need to open “Downloader“.
And enter the address www.everybithelps.io/downloads and select “Go“.
The app to download is called “Virus Total” if you click on that and scroll down, the app with start downloading automatically.
Click on “Install” and “Install” again, and once it’s complete, you can click on “Done” or “Open“.
Then you can go ahead to “Scan”.
And you may find that it comes up with a warning about Google Play services being needed, but you can ignore that, as it’ll work fine. So just click “Ok”.
You can then view your report, and if there is anything here with a red x, you’ll obviously need to remove it, and it’ll then remove anything that’s harmful from your device.
5. Amazon Fire Stick Privacy & Settings
Then finally, there are a few extra settings that you can check. So if you go across to “Settings.”
Under “Preferences”, “Privacy Settings”.
Turn “Off” ‘Device Usage Data’, as Amazon uses your personal data.
And there’s also “Collect App Usage Data”, which you may also want to turn “Off”.
There are also interest-based ads in here in case you want that off or on, and that’s down to personal preference.
Then under “Preferences” again, under “Data monitoring”, you might also want this switched “Off” so that your data consumption isn’t being monitored either.
