How to Use the Search Function to Find and Download Apps on a Fire TV Stick. If you don't see the app you're looking for in the App section of your Fire TV interface, you can use the search function to look for specific apps. You can also use this function if you have a broader category of app that you're looking for. How to add apps to home screen on Firestick and Fire TV. Newer Fire TV Stick and Fire TV models are receiving an update that changes this process.

The settings in your Android Manifest file determine where your app is installed on Fire devices. Two storage locations are possible:

• External storage (such as an SD card)
• Internal storage (using the device's memory)

Fire TV Stick doesn't have external storage, but Fire TV (Gen 1 and Gen 2, but not Gen 3) does provide external storage options through a memory card slot.

Generally, your app should specify external storage as the default install location.

Best Practices

As a best practice, most apps should specify preferExternal for the installLocation in the Android Manifest file. If left unspecified, your app will be installed on internal storage.

Filling up internal storage can lead to:

• Fewer app installs
• Poor app ratings
• Negative customer experiences

Some users may have abundant space available in external storage, but if an app's Manifest does not specify preferExternal, the app will be installed internally. As a result, users get prompted with low storage warnings or cannot install the app at all, which leads to user frustration.

Selecting preferExternal helps ensure the greatest user base for your app and a better user experience on Fire devices.

How to Specify External Storage

In the AndroidManifest.xml of your app, inside the <manifest> tag, add the installLocation attribute and set its value to preferExternal. Here's an example:

The installLocation parameter has several values available:

Note that even though the APK file is installed on external storage, all databases, private user data, optimized .dex files, and extracted native code are stored on internal storage.

See App Install Location in the Android documentation for more information.

When to Select Internal Storage

Most apps should select preferExternal for the installLocation. However, DRM-protected media apps are an exception:

• If your app plays DRM-protected media, DRM resources may become unstable if USB storage becomes unavailable.
• If your app plays DRM-protected media, either do not include installLocation at all, or set its value to internalOnly.

In addition to DRM-protected media apps, the following types of applications should never be installed on external storage:

• Services
• Alarm Services
• Input Method Engines
• Account Managers
• Sync Adapters
• Device Administrators
• Broadcast Receivers listening for 'boot completed' message
• Live Wallpapers (not supported on Fire OS)
• App Widgets (not supported on Fire OS)

See the App Install Location documentation in Android for more details.

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Fire TV External Storage Settings

Fire TV (Generation 1) supports USB external storage and Fire TV (Generation 2) includes a microSD slot for external storage. On these devices, settings are provided for users to manage connected external storage.

Users can also move internally stored apps to the SD card:

Handling secondary downloads in your app

For apps that perform their own secondary downloads as part of first run or at any other time, these downloaded files are usually stored where the APK file was installed on the device. If the app was installed on external storage, the APK file will be on external storage.

Some applications, particularly games, use secondary downloads containing additional textures, levels, or other asset files. If you are handling this download in your app code, such as part of first run initialization, use the Android PackageManager getApplicationInfo method to retrieve the ApplicationInfo class.

The ApplicationInfo class contains the location of the APK (sourceDir) and the public parts of the source directory, including the resources and manifest (publicSourceDir). If the app has been installed on external storage, these paths will point to that location and indicate where users should install the additional downloaded content.

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If your app uses installLocation='preferExternal' to install a 40MB APK onto external storage, but then stores a 1GB downloaded data file to internal storage because the app uses the ApplicationInfo dataDir path, this would defeat the purpose of using external storage and quickly fill up the device's internal storage, leading to customer frustration. Therefore make sure the secondary downloads use the sourceDir for the download path.

Specifying Install Location with Unity

Unity is one of the most popular tools for creating games for the Amazon Appstore. Unity supports setting the install location through the Player Settings Inspector for Android. To configure your app install location on external storage:

1. From your Unity project, click File-Build Settings….

2. From the Build Settings dialog, select Android in the Platform list and click the Player Settings… button to display the inspector.

3. Open the Other Settings section and look for the Install Location setting. preferExternal is usually the default – this is almost always the best choice.

YoYo Games’ Gamemaker:Studio also uses preferExternal as the default for Android projects. Although you can manually change this default, it's recommended that you leave it as is.

Other engines and development frameworks provide similar options. Consult the documentation for the tool you are using to make sure you set the installLocation to preferExternal in the APK manifest.

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Last updated: Oct 29, 2020