am I blind? How do you search for apps?
For the life of me I can't figure out how to search for specific apps. Is this even an option?
Posted Dec 9, 2017, 9:02 PM UTC
98
You have to go on Amazon.com using the same Amazon account, and then you can select apps to have installed on your fire tv. As far as I know there's no good way to search for apps on the fire tv itself, though I could be wrong
6
Did you buy the new "basic" one that's for outside of the US (e.g. Canada)? If so, it doesn't have search functionality. It's kind of ridiculous. I sent an email to Amazon customer support to ask about all the things that weren't working on the non-US version and they replied with something like "these are great ideas, thanks! We'll send them to our dev team". Uh, what? There's a whole separate dev team for the non-US devices?
The non-US version also does not work with the Amazon Echo, and the new Silk Browser is not available. I'm sure there are more ways in which it is needlessly restricted.
3
I did. I spent way too much time trying to find the search option because I thought theres absolutely no way it doesn't have it.
I don't think they have a seperate dev team, I think thats just a canned response. Regardless it's the most baffling tech situation I've ever seen
3
I did the exact same thing. I agree, probably a canned response, but seriously... the whole Amazon ecosystem seems half-baked in Canada. I bought an Echo as well and while it is neat, some skills (like my Nest thermostat) only work if I set the language to "English (US)", which of course breaks the Canadian-specific skills like CBC. Now something's totally messed up and the option of "English (Canada)" is completely missing.
3
I thought I was going insane!
What a stupid, half-baked rollout.
2
voice search
2
Click the magnifying glass on the top-left of the home screen and search there. Install the Fire Remote app on your phone first so you can use your phone's on-screen keyboard instead of typing with the remote control.
It seems to only return results for apps that are compatible with your device. For example, searching for Silk Browser turns up nothing on my 3rd gen, presumably because they haven't released a version of it for the 3rd gen FTV yet (it's rumored to come out this month). Compatible apps do show in my search results.
1
It's an awful, awful interface. You have to just do a generic "search" and trust it will return results for apps. Which it usually won't. I suppose it's meant to keep things 'simple', but in fact it just makes the end user confused and angry.
The good news is that almost all apps on the FireTV that don't come with it out of the box are either useless or broken.
I love my 2nd gen fireTV. I do. But good God the interface is frustrating.