With their affordable prices and compact designs, streaming sticks and boxes make excellent alternatives to smart TVs. They’re particularly handy for upgrading an old, ‘dumb’ TV set with the latest streaming services, and for taking your entertainment on holiday with you.
In our ‘Don’t Buy a New TV’ Cover Feature in Issue 678 (get it from www.snipca.com/49970), we revealed a few tricks for improving your streaming device. These included disabling options that spy on you, freeing up storage and turning off auto-playing videos. But by digging deeper into your device’s settings, you can unlock extra apps, content and features that make your stick or box even better value.
We don’t mean modifying your TV device to access paid-for services for free – an illegal practice the police and Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) have been cracking down on (www.snipca.com/50381). Instead, we’ll explain how to safely install apps that aren’t available from built-in app stores, expand your choice of entertainment by bypassing geographic restrictions, access hidden apps and channels, and much more.
We’ve focused on official Fire TV, Google/Android TV and Roku devices, but we’ve also tested an Android TV box from an unknown brand to discover how it compares – see page 57 for our verdict.
INSTALL APPS FROM OUTSIDE OFFICIAL APP STORES
All streaming devices let you install apps from the thousands available in their official app stores – or the Google Play Store if the manufacturer doesn’t have its own marketplace. But although the quantity and quality of free and paid-for apps are generally impressive, you may find your device’s store doesn’t have every app you want.
Sometimes this is because Google, Amazon and/or Roku prohibit apps of that type – such as tools that block adverts, modify a device’s behaviour or provide access to copyrighted content. Last year, the popular – and entirely legal – app ‘Downloader by AFTVnews’ was briefly banned from the Play Store, following complaints that it let users view piracy websites (www.snipca.com/50295), as you can in any web browser. We’ll cover that app in more detail below.
In other instances, developers choose to exclude their apps from official stores, because they’ll have more freedom – and occasionally make more money – by offering them independently. And some apps aren’t available because they’re not optimised for TVs, even though they work fine on big screens.
Thankfully, provided an app doesn’t pose a threat to your privacy or security, it’s usually possible to sideload it on your streaming stick or box, by downloading and installing its APK file. We’ll now explain how to do this on different TV devices (see our How To on page 35 for more on sideloading).
Sideload apps on a Fire TV device
Before you can sideload apps on a
