Firefox is ending support for Amazon Fire TV and Echo Show devices

Android Police

By Will Sattelberg

Published Apr 9, 2021

You'll need to switch to Amazon Silk after April 30th

Firefox came to Fire TV devices way back at the tail-end of 2017, available alongside Amazon's own Silk browser. Although there's plenty of reasons to access the web on a TV, it really only showed up for one reason. During the years where YouTube was unavailable on Amazon's streaming gadgets, Firefox provided an easy alternative. Of course, an official YouTube app has been back on Fire TV since 2019, significantly reducing the need for a third-party web browser. Starting on April 30th, 2021, Mozilla will no longer support Firefox on the Fire TV or its Echo Show.

According to Mozilla, the app will cease receiving security updates at the end of this month. It'll also be delisted from the Amazon Appstore, rendering it unable to be reinstalled if removed from a device. Echo Show users who have Firefox set as their default browser will be redirected to Silk instead.

Mozilla launched Firefox on Fire TV just two weeks after Google announced it would be pulling YouTube from all Amazon devices. Neither company was particularly subtle about why the internet's favorite open-source browser was suddenly on your TV. Firefox's first default shortcut led directly to YouTube's TV-friendly web app. Simultaneously, Amazon added a pop-up message redirecting users to its browser or Firefox if they tried to stream using the legacy app. It seems likely that Mozilla just doesn't see much of a reason to continue developing for the platform. Anyone who wants to browse social media sites on their Fire TV Sticks would probably choose Amazon's default browser over seeking out an alternative.

As Mozilla so helpfully points out on its support page, both of Amazon's devices continue to use Silk for web browsing. While Fire TV devices have dedicated apps for both YouTube and YouTube TV, the Echo Show still lacks attention from Google. If you're using Firefox to stream videos from your favorite creators, you'll need to switch to Silk to keep watching. Alternatively, you can always install the Android TV version of Firefox on your Fire TV by grabbing the APK from APK Mirror.