How to Speed Up Your Firestick?
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Have you ever asked why your firestick is so slow? The firestick from Amazon has grown to be the most popular streaming device in the world. But what happens when seemingly for no reason it starts to slow down, which may mean it:
- Delivers poor quality video
- Lags between screens or actions from the remote
- Applications suddenly crash
- Sound frequently starts playing out of sync
- Videos take longer than normal to buffer
There are only two core reasons why a Firestick is running slowly:
- Overheating
- Overloading: Too many apps and processes running on the device
How Can You Speed Up Your Firestick?
Here we tackle the 2 core reasons for your firestick slowing down, follow through all the steps until you find a solution that works for you. If nothing else works, then a factory reset in Step 11 of Overloading is always a good way to go.
Overheating
This is a pretty common problem with the amazon firestick. It’s great, but it’s cheap. The mass-made plastic cases don’t have any room for ventilation so over time the Firestick can overheat.
Step 1: Change USB
– We don’t advise you to leave your firestick plugged directly in the mains if you do make sure that the plug socket is off when not in use. Otherwise even before you start using your device it’s already warm, due to being exposed to constantly circulating current. Or, if you have a USB socket in your TV, plug it in there. So, your firestick starts off cool.
Step 2: Make custom Cooling Holes
-Ok, so this is not for the faint-hearted. Or those who fear voiding the warranty on their device. The plastic casing for your firestick has no vents. So, you could just make your own. You can pry the plastic case of the device and then pop some holes into the case to allow air to circulate.
Note: Newer devices seem less prone to overheat, and almost all overheating problems can be fixed with Step 1. If you don’t feel comfortable making “modifications” then don’t. You don’t want to go from a device that overheats sometimes, to one that just doesn’t work at all.
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Overloading
By far the more common main problem is overloading. The Amazon firestick has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. That really isn’t very much. It was primarily designed as a simple device to stream directly from Amazon, not a super media player for hundreds of applications and Kodi add-ons. A lot of people seem to miss that in their criticism of Amazon. It’s overheating because you’re using it for things it was not designed for. The Firestick is brilliant for what you get. Hands down.
Step 1: Reset and Power
-A common problem with technology is that we leave it running 24/7. For whatever reason, a process may be a stick, or the Operating System just needs to reboot. Switch the device off for 2 minutes and then switch back on.
Step 2: Check for Updates
-By default, Amazon will have enabled automatic updates. This is a function you should not change. So, if for any reason you have turned them off, you can put them back on by going to:
- From the Home, screen go to Settings
- Applications
- App store
- Automatic Updates
You can double-check online to see if you have the latest version of the application. If the numbers are out of sync, switch the Firestick off and then back on. On start-up it will automatically search for new updates and install them.
Step 3: Check Your Internet
-This is a step to check off if your problems are mainly related to video, audio, and buffering rather than applications randomly crashing. Go through the full checklist, just to make sure the problem is not unrelated to the device.
Wi-Fi Speed
From a Laptop or Browser Go To https://www.speedtest.net/
Run the speed checks. If your download speed is showing less than 10MBps then it may be worth checking your internet package and expected speeds. Also, look at your Internet Service Providers websites and see if there are outages in your area or maintenance work. If you’re trying to play in HD or even 4K then 20MBps + speeds are best. Less than that and you may get some lag and video/audio being out of sync.
VPN – Switch Servers
If you are using a VPN (see reason under Step 9) then it may be worth trying to find a new server. Often VPN providers will shunt you to the nearest server. This may not always be the fastest. Plus, intermittently servers can go down. Worth trying another local server to see if that makes a difference. Providers like Surfshark, ExpressVPN, IPVanish, and NordVPN have inbuilt speed tests in their application so you can check and find the fastest server. Sometimes your recommended server may not actually be the fastest.
Turn Off Your VPN
VPN’s do slow down your internet connection, they can take anywhere up to 20% off your bandwidth. You can test how much your VPN is paring your speed, by installing the client on your device and then running: https://www.speedtest.net/, with and then without the VPN. If you aren’t using Kodi, and are just watching a paid-for service like Amazon Prime or Netflix, where you aren’t trying to watch region-restricted content (i.e. you are in the UK watching content that is only accessible by people based in the US) then it might be worth turning the VPN off.
Reboot Your Router
The next off-and-on trick. Turn your router off and leave for 2 minutes before turning it back on.
Step 4: Clear Out All Your Old Addons
Just like any device, your Firestick will start to fill up with addons, and applications you loved on Day 1 and 6 months later are nothing but a distant memory. So, it might be time for a purge to get back some precious storage space. 8GB really isn’t that much, so every MB counts.
You can do this by:
- Go to the Home screen
- Settings
- Applications
- Manage Installed Applications
- Just like Windows, you’ll see a list of applications, uninstall any you’re not using.
- Just to be safe, restart your firestick
Step 5: Stop Unused Addons
Some add ons run persistently. Which means they are always taking up some RAM in the background. One or two is fine, but when you have quite a few then this can really tax your already limited RAM. Using similar steps, you can force apps that are running, which you aren’t really using, and may consider returning to Step 5 and installing them all together.
Do this by going to:
- Home Screen
- Settings
- Applications
- Under the list click Force Stop instead of uninstalling
Step 6: Clearing Cache
One thing we love about the firestick is that it has an inbuilt clear cache function which is handy, particularly if you run Kodi. Kodi by itself doesn’t have a cache, so the firestick may be cluttered with old Kodi add-ons and downloaded zip files you no longer need.
You can clear data and clear cache at the same time:
- You can find this under Home Screen > Settings > Applications
- This can be done individually for each app, start with Kodi and the bigger sized applications which you use most frequently
Step 7: Disabling Unnecessary Features
Amazon is a data-gathering machine and has quite a few secret functions running in the background which can continue to feed their algorithms and provide you with data about your usage habits, as well as pushing their products on you whenever you log in. Disabling these unnecessary features will ease the strain on your RAM and give more power to other processes.
Audio and Video Auto Play
You’ll notice that whenever you start your firestick, there are new videos and trailers being played by Amazon, encouraging you to buy the latest release. This featured content can really burn up processor speed, so turn these off:
- Settings
- Preferences
- Featured content
- Turn off both video and audio autoplay
Turn Off Data Monitoring
Notifications
Amazon will use notifications to push new products, inform you about updates and brand-new apps you can try. This all takes up unnecessary space. There are two notifications to turn off.
Appstore:
- Settings
- Applications
- App store
- Notifications
Individual apps:
- Settings
- Preferences
- Notifications Settings
- App Notifications
Step 8: VPN
Using a VPN has a multitude of benefits, from keeping you anonymous online, maintaining your privacy, and allowing you to access censored sites and content around the world. But in terms of the firestick, it has 2 clear benefits.
Internet Speed Throttling
Sometimes your ISP slows down your internet connection, and you would never even know it. This could be because the amount of data you are using is at odds with your neighbor. If you spend all day and night streaming content, then you are burning up maybe 20-30 GB each day. That’s much more than your next-door neighbor who watches Cable TV and checks their email once a day. So that your ISP can level out of the load, they may slow down your speeds, so you are forced to stream at a slower rate. A VPN can help you avoid this, by encrypting your data using military-grade 256-bit AES encryption. Why does this matter? With the encryption, your ISP, can’t tell what you are doing. Your data packets could be email, browsing, downloading a report. They have no way of telling. So, they won’t throttle you.
URL’s Being Blocked
You are trying to access URLs that are getting blocked, or using a Kodi addon, which gets multiple URLs blocked, and then find ones that work. Again, this is because your ISP helps to block over 30% of the internet to normal users. Mainly because the content has been flagged as inappropriate or breaking the law. As your data is encrypted it cannot block a URL it doesn’t know you are going to. You can also use your VPN to change your IP and appear in any country around the world if you want to access content that is only viewable in that specific country.
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How to Install Surfshark VPN on Firestick
If your Firestick still has the older interface, read this article to learn how to update it: Update Firestick Interface.
Follow our screenshots below to install the SurfShark VPN app on your Fire TV stick.
1. Go to the Home screen of your Firestick.
2. Navigate towards the Find tab. Press the Search button from the resulting dropdown.
3. Type in the keyword of SurfShark and select from the suggestions that will appear.
4. Click the official SurfShark icon from your search results.
5. Press the Download (You own it) button.
6. The SurfShark VPN installer will download on your device.
7. SurfShark VPN’s app will automatically install itself on your Fire TV stick.
8. Press the Open button after completing SurfShark VPN’s installation process.
9. Please wait for the SurfShark VPN to load its user interface.
10. You can now log in with your SurfShark VPN account credentials.
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Step 9: Optimise Kodi
You may be using Kodi on your Firestick, so the problem just happens when you are Kodi. An all-in-one entertainment centre dating back to 2002. Where you can download thousands of add ons to watch anything from the latest movie blockbusters to the Superbowl, and all for free.
If Kodi keeps crashing, or you are having trouble with buffering there are a few different things you can try:
- Clear Cache (See Step 7, clear cache just for the Kodi app)
- Make sure you have the latest version of Kodi downloaded
- Disable hardware acceleration: Do this from the Kodi home screen by going to Settings > Player Settings > Click gear icon 3 times to turn to expect> Allow hardware acceleration – DXVA2 > Disable]
- Install TV add ons to get any missing dependencies by going to Settings > File Manager > Add Source > URL: http://fusion.tvaddons.co/ > Back space > Open package (icon in top left corner > Install from Zip File
- Alternatively, look for Ares Wizard addon and then run the Advanced Settings Wizard worse comes to the worst if the problem persists with Kodi then you can delete it and give it a fresh install.
Step 10: Factory Reset
Finally, if everything else that you have tried still isn’t working, then it’s time to go back to the beginning and do the dreaded factory reset. It’s a bummer we know, as everything will get wiped from the firestick. But better to start again than be perpetually slow.
Carry out a reset by going to:
- Settings
- Device
- At the bottom, click Reset to Factory Defaults
