Revitalizing an Amazon Fire TV Stick

2025-07-26

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Anytime I go on a trip with my wife, we like to watch the 2014 Wes Anderson film "The Grand Budapest Hotel." We usually bring my laptop with us so we can play the film on the hotel's TV. However, the HDMI port on my Dell Inspiron 3153 is beginning to fail, so we need to use a different device going forward.

Luckily, we still had an Amazon Fire TV stick from 2016 tucked away in a drawer. The model we own is the second generation, which runs a modified version of Android 5 Lollipop. Thanks to the developers at XDA, this version of the Fire TV stick can be rooted and flashed with an unofficial build of LineageOS 12.1. Interestingly, installing TWRP involves disassembling the device, removing a heat shield, and shorting two pins on the board!

After installing LineageOS, we added the following apps:

Fennec F-Droid is a fork of Firefox and is needed to log into WiFi networks that use a captive portal. We use Yggdrasil and Terminal Emulator to connect to our home network and copy videos from my NAS to the Fire TV stick.

Some extra setup was needed to make the device useful. The Fire TV launcher's keyboard behaves differently than many apps would expect, so we often need to use a real keyboard. Swipe gestures also require a mouse. We bought a USB OTG splitter cable and use it to connect a wireless USB keyboard with a trackpad. This also makes navigating Kodi much easier.

For me, the Fire TV stick is an excellent example of old technology finding new life thanks to unofficial support. The stock Fire TV OS has no way to directly sideload apps, and without root access, a lot of modern Android functionality is missing. I can bypass all of that with LineageOS. Many current or close-to-current FOSS apps are still compatible with Lollipop, so even though Android 5 reached EOL in 2018, it can still use online services like YouTube. Kodi enables me to watch local media and not rely on streaming platforms like Netflix.

An increasing number of my devices no longer receive updates. Software support will soon become sporadic and will eventually end completely. Those devices are still perfectly functional, so while I can still install new software on them, I want to future-proof them as much as I can. With any luck, our Fire TV stick will still last us several more years.

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[Last updated: 2025-07-26]