The Amazon Fire TV Stick is a gadget for your television that will instantly turn it into a SmartTV, being one of the most popular of its kind. Now, thanks to LineageOS 18.1, a ROM based on Android 11, you can add the Google operating system instead of the Amazon Fire OS that comes by default.
Despite the popularity of these Amazon devices, the Fire OS is far from perfect. It integrates functions such as the Alexa voice assistant, yes, but for example, it does not have access to a larger catalog of applications in the Google Play Store. All this is fixed by installing this unofficial operating system on your Fire TV Stick 3rd generation and Stick TV Lite.
How to install Android 11 ROM
The process to get this modified and unofficial version of Android 11 is not easy, so the first thing we have to recommend is that you follow the steps carefully and that you do this process at your own risk and knowing that you can damage irreversibly your unit in case of doing something wrong. Of course, it does not require physically opening the device in any way.
Amazon FireTV Stick
First of all, you need to be on Fire OS version 7.2.7.3 or lower , so if you’re planning on doing this, don’t upgrade. Amazon is rolling out new Fire OS updates to its streaming devices that ban users from using custom launchers .
Previously, installing launchers was made possible by an app called Launcher Manager, but this ability is now being discontinued with these software updates.
With this prerequisite met, you’ll need a Linux installation or live system and a micro-USB cable to take advantage of an exploit and install the Team win Recovery Project , better known simply as TWRP . Once done, you will be able to use TWRP to flash custom ROMs .
Once with TWRP, the process to flash Lineage OS 18.1 Unofficial ROM on Fire Stick is made up of 4 main steps:
- Reboot to recovery mode
- Clear data, system (/system_root) and cache
- Flash the ROM and Google Apps (Gapps)
- reboot and wait
Advantages of using Lineage OS
Lineage OS 18.1 is a free, community-created firmware distribution of Android 11 that is designed to increase performance over stock Android for your device. LineageOS is based on the Android Open Source Project with additional contributions from many people within the Android community.
Among the improvements that we can see, is the change of the Fire TV interface, far from being perfect, quite messy and full of ads that you cannot remove.
Official Fire OS interface
Another fact is that despite being based on Android, Fire OS lacks support from the Google Play Store and instead uses only the apps and channels supported by Amazon Apps (which already includes Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Disney+, DAZN, etc.). Atresplayer, Mitele and more).
In this way you will be able to install on your Smart TV (indirectly, via Fire Stick or Stick TV Lite) other applications that can run on Google’s mobile operating system.
Despite being the first build of Lineage OS 18.1 adapted to these Amazon devices, it is quite stable and works with audio, bluetooth, WiFi, HDMI, etc. The only noteworthy problem at the moment is that Netflix hangs after watching a movie , something that is solved simply by restarting to see the next one.
