Amazon's new Fire TV Sticks prevent sideloading

Sideloading will be a thing of the past for the vast majority of users with Amazon's new generation of Fire TV Sticks, Amazon is now officially communicating this to customers. They are shown a corresponding notice on Amazon's product page for the new Fire TV Stick HD. Previously, there were already indications that sideloading would be handled much more strictly under the new Fire TV Stick operating system Vega OS.

Vega OS is a Linux OS that replaces Fire OS, which was based on Android's open-source variant, on the Fire TV Sticks. With Vega OS, Amazon promises up to 30 percent faster performance. However, the company had also emphasized long in advance that only officially supported applications would run under Vega OS – which was already an indication that sideloading, i.e., manually installing apps from unofficial sources, could become more difficult. On the German product page of the latest generation of the Fire TV Stick HD, which is not yet available in Germany, it now reads:

"For enhanced security, this device prevents sideloading or the installation of apps from unknown sources. Only apps from the Fire TV Amazon Appstore are available for download."

According to media reports, this notice is also visible to US users on the US site, but not for all – this could also be the case here. In the US, sales of the Fire TV Stick HD start at the end of April.

Sideloading: Amazon confirms the end for regular Vega users to heise

Amazon had already clarified the new course on sideloading in the fall to heise online. The background was massive problems with piracy apps, which can usually only be installed via sideloading. Amazon was repeatedly under fire because of this until the company decided in the fall to specifically take action against a whole series of such apps and block them in Fire OS. At that time, heise online learned from Amazon upon inquiry that the measures under Fire OS would only be limited to piracy apps and that sideloading should generally remain possible. However, Vega OS should not allow sideloading for regular users. According to Amazon, developers should still be able to sideload under Vega OS.

To do this, they must register their device accordingly with Amazon according to Arstechnica. Sideloading fans who do not or cannot do so may have little joy with the entire new generation of Fire TV Sticks. On its developer pages, Amazon announced that all models will be equipped with Vega OS in the future. If you have an old stick with Fire OS, on which sideloading is still possible, you don't have to expect to be moved to Vega OS via a system update and thus into the new, strict sideloading regime. In the fall, the company emphasized to heise online that contrary to rumors, there were no plans to upgrade existing Fire TV devices with Fire OS as the operating system to Vega OS.

(nen)