Fire TV stick is one of the most widely used smart accessory in the market with approximately 35 percent of the share of streaming platforms. We’ve come about some of the best tips and tricks that could make best of your Fire TV. If you care about that sort of stuff.

Here are some of them.

YouTube for Fire TV

YouTube is officially not available on Fire TV stick, but since it technically runs Android, there is a workaround for it. The Fire TV stick still has a YouTube.com icon, and when you click it, it redirects you to a message that you have to either download Silk or Firefox to continue. Download either of these applications, and you are good to go. Now whenever you will tap on the YouTube.com, it will redirect you to the YouTube for TV interface by which you can play your YouTube videos easily, you can even sign in and sync your YouTube data as well.

Use Bluetooth Headphones

Listening to the TV audio might be tricky sometimes, although we have plenty of choices to choose from like we have mentioned in one of our previous videos. Smart devices like the Fire TV Stick allow you to use your favorite Bluetooth headphones and Bluetooth speakers. Navigate to Settings > Controllers & Bluetooth Devices > Other Bluetooth Devices and select the Bluetooth device that you want to connect. And there you go.

Use USB OTG and convert your Fire TV stick to Fire TV

Fire TV stick has OTG functionality, but it is one of those features that are never promoted by the company itself. You can access the OTG function by using hardware designed for it. This 5$ cable lets you use an OTG with Fire TV, it has a male Micro USB jack at one end, a female micro USB at the other end and a female USB Type A as well, you just have to connect the male end to the Fire TV stick and insert the power cable inside the female micro USB jack which will act as a power source. Once everything is set up, you can insert a USB thumb drive into the Type A slot or further increase the capacity by adding a USB hub and then insert a thumb drive. You will be able to see the thumb drive in your file explorer.

Put device to sleep

One super handy feature of Fire TV stick is that you can hold down the Home button for 5 seconds while on the home screen and have quick access to settings and use the Sleep command to put the device to sleep.

Screen Mirroring

Just like the previous one, you can long press the Home button and then choose the mirroring option to access the mirroring window of Fire TV stick. Use the screen mirror option on your Android mobile to search for Fire TV and then hit connect. Once you do that, you will see that your phone is being mirrored on the big screen, although this is not the best mirroring experience that I have had, but it surely can let you view those vacation pictures of your fam while chilling together.

Use your smartphone as a keyboard

When it comes to typing on the Fire TV stick, only one word comes in my mind: PAIN. Navigating through a huge on-screen keyboard with the huge keys is really a tough thing to do. Thankfully, there's a workaround. Just download the Fire TV Remote app from the Play store or Apple Store and then sign in with the same Amazon account as the Fire stick. This also comes in handy if you checked into the hotel today that I forgot my remote at home. Although, you need two smartphones for that. One that will act as a remote and the second one will recreate your home Wi-Fi network and its password.

Arrange Applications

All the apps that you install on the Fire stick are under a single good with the name all apps and games. This can be handy and confusing at the same time depending on the number of apps one installs. If you install a lot of apps, there might be times when your favorite apps appear to be shifting downwards. Just select the app that you want to move and press the menu button and the choose Move. Now you can move the app anywhere you like.

Use Aptoide TV

Google isn't on the best terms with Amazon, and that's why there is no official YouTube on Fire TV stick. But Play store isn't the only one which has apps, there are other stores, too. In fact, Amazon has an app store too but the best one according to me is the Aptoide TV app store. Aptoide TV has a plethora of apps (mostly free). Although a thing to note here is that Aptoide does have some illegal movie streaming apps as well, we won't be discussing them in this video (or any other video). Once you open Aptoide, just like a normal app store you will find apps under different categories, and you can download them according to your choice. The best part about this app store is that it can auto-update your existing apps so go and download Aptoide on your Fire TV stick.

Mouse toggle

Fire Stick remote lets you toggle in just four sides, up down left and right but what if you install Chrome on it to access the Internet? Since it’s an Android based device, installation shouldn't be a hassle, but you can't properly use the app with the Fire TV remote for these apps which are originally made for Android mobile. To solve this problem, there is an app called Mouse Toggle for Fire TV which lets you convert the normal navigation to precise navigation by adding a pointer. Just install the app from the link in the description and then start the service. Once installed, press the play/pause button twice and you will see a dot which can be used as a mouse toggle.

So, these were some best tips and tricks that we found awesome. Let us know in the comments section below which ones you end up using. Also, check out Smart DNS Proxy if you are keen to unblock geo-restricted content on streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Amazon Prime Video, etc. It’s got a 14-day free trial and after that it’s only $5 a month. Thanks for reading and watching, see you in the next video and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you haven’t already.