Has Downloader stopped working on your Fire TV Stick? Don’t panic, Amazon isn’t killing sideloading on previous models, and a fix is on the way

Amazon says it'll be fixed 'over the coming week'

News By Rowan Davies Published 15 September 2026

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• Fire TV owners spotted an issue that prevented sideloading on compatible Fire TV models
• This convinced users to believe that Amazon was clamping down on sideloading on older devices
• Turns out it was just a bug, and Amazon is rolling out a fix soon

There's a dedicated community of Amazon Fire TV Stick owners who like to sideload apps on their devices. However, a recent issue seemed to block the feature, leading to users worry that the tech giant was removing sideloading for older devices to match the lack of sideloading capability on the latest Fire TV Stick HD.

Turns out, it was just a bug. It's been plaguing Fire TV owners for the past month, and was first spotted by users when Amazon rolled out an update that effectively stopped Downloader, a popular sideloading service developed by AFTV News, from working.

Soon after, similar services started vanishing from the ‘Install unknown apps’ list in Fire TV settings, mainly ones that can install apps from sources that aren’t the official Fire TV app store.

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While the bug didn’t invade every Fire TV device, it was enough to make users suspicious that Amazon was cracking down on the feature. Without Downloader and similar apps, you can’t grant permission for them to install other apps.

Thankfully, Amazon has confirmed that a fix is on the way, sharing the following with AFTV News:

"There was a bug in a recent Fire TV Settings update that caused the 'Install unknown apps' list to appear incomplete or empty on some Fire TV devices. We have identified the cause and a fix will roll out in an upcoming Fire TV Settings update, installed automatically on affected devices over the coming week."

According to AFTV News, the update will be installed to your Fire TV device automatically and will likely arrive as a component update. You can also check for it by going to Settings > My Fire TV > About > Check for updates.

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