Amazon says a fix is coming for a Fire TV bug that suddenly broke sideloading

Published Sep 16, 2026, 3:29 PM EDT Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto. Over the past 15 years, he's written thousands of articles. Patrick has also interviewed dozens of tech industry executives and covered GDC, E3, Gamescom, WWDC, Apple keynotes, Samsung Unpacked events and more. Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. Sign in to your XDA account Summary Amazon says a Fire TV Settings bug hid the "Install unknown apps" list, and that a fix will roll out automatically. The issue has hit Fire TV devices inconsistently. Check Settings > My Fire TV > About for an update (it's unclear when it will arrive) Vega OS-powered Fire TV Sticks lack sideloading support. Last month, Amazon released a Fire TV software update that prevented several devices from sideloading apps through Downloader and similar sideloading apps. Given Amazon's shift to Vega OS and the fact that the tech giant obviously isn't a fan of the piracy sideloading can enable, it wouldn't be entirely surprising if this was an intentional move by the company. However, thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case. Amazon has confirmed to AFTVnews (via How-to Geek) that the issue with Downloader is a bug and that an update is coming soon. The bug prevents Fire TV devices from properly displaying a list of installed apps from unknown sources. Apps from unknown sources are installed through a process often called sideloading. Because you can't see the app list, users can't give Downloader and similar apps the permissions required to install sideloaded apps on Fire TV Stick devices. The statement AFTVNews received from Amazon about the situation reads as follows: 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. The problem hasn't appeared on all Fire TV devices When a fix does arrive, it should install in the background Based on various Reddit posts, the glitch doesn't seem to occur across all Fire TV Stick and Fire TV devices, and in many cases, it isn't even happening consistently. When a fix does release, it'll likely be a behind-the-scenes system component update rather than a notable operating system update. If you want to check for the update manually, go to Settings > My Fire TV > About > Check For Updates. There's currently no timeline for when the update will release. While it's reassuring to learn this wasn't an intentional move on Amazon's part, I wouldn't be surprised to see the tech giant do something like this again in a more official capacity. Amazon says that it plans to continue developing both Linux-based Vega OS and Android-based Fire OS simultaneously, but newer Fire TV Stick devices all feature Vega OS. While Vega OS is a capable, lightweight operating system, it doesn't support sideloading, and third-party app support is lackluster. Hopefully, Amazon positions Vega OS for lower-end streaming sticks like the Fire TV Stick HD, while reserving Fire OS for higher-end devices like future versions of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max.