There are legions of Amazon Fire TV Stick owners that love to be able to sideload apps onto their hardware from places other than Amazon’s official app store, but their passion has come under attack with the company’s decision to transition to the new Vega operating system.
It seems that Vega OS is being made the default for all new Fire TV devices, and the new OS doesn’t support sideloading, and so it will eventually bring that practice to an end. But at least Amazon can’t stop it on earlier generations of its streaming hardware
Those with older Fire TV Sticks were therefore quite alarmed when, a few weeks ago, the incredibly popular Downloader sideloading service developed by AFTV News suddenly stopped working. Given that Amazon has publicly come out in opposition to pirated TV content, much of which comes from third-party apps, it was assumed that the company had decided to block Downloader.
However, it turns out that it was never a concerted effort by Amazon to clamp down on third-party apps, but rather just a bug. And it has now been fixed.
When the bug first appeared, it wasn’t just Downloader that stopped working. In fact, a number of similar services that enable users to download apps from non-official sources also vanished from the “Install Unknown Apps” list in Fire TV’s settings. While the bug didn’t impact every type of Fire TV device, there was a lot of suspicion and talk of Amazon launching a crackdown. Because without using Downloader or a similar service, it’s not possible to sideload third-party apps.
But Amazon has now confirmed that there is no crackdown, and that a fix for the bug is going to be released imminently through a firmware update. “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,” Amazon said in a statement to AFTV News. “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.”
Fire TV Stick fans can therefore breathe a sigh of relief that Amazon isn’t going to try and block them from watching pirate streams of live Premier League football games or whatever else it is they’re doing with their non-official apps, for now at least.
However, the days of being able to access almost anything you want to watch are clearly numbered, for Amazon is intent on switching to Vega OS in all new Fire TV devices. Which means that once the older ones die their natural death, there’ll be no more need for Downloader or any similar service anyway.
