February 1st 2025.
It has come to light that Amazon has recently removed a beloved feature from some of their Fire Stick devices after a new update. This software update has resulted in the removal of the feature from both the older 1st-gen Fire TV Stick 4K and the current 2nd-gen Fire TV Stick Max models this week. This particular feature was one of the key selling points of these streaming devices, as it allowed users to access a variety of apps and streaming services.
For the past five years, users have been able to hide apps from their homepages if they felt overwhelmed by the number of Fire TV apps on their screens. All they had to do was press the menu button on an app and select 'Hide from Your Apps'. This did not uninstall or offload the app, but simply removed it from the homepage while still keeping the main app data intact. Unfortunately, this feature is no longer available, leaving users with no choice but to keep all their apps visible on their home screens.
This feature was initially introduced as part of a new interface design that also included user profiles. This allowed each person using the streaming device to have their own organized set of apps. However, with the recent update, this feature has been taken away. Now, if multiple profiles exist on one device with different app preferences, all users will have the same apps displayed on their home screens. This can be frustrating for individuals who do not use certain apps, such as children using the Twitch app while their parents have no use for it.
Even pre-installed apps that cannot be deleted, such as Prime Video, Fire TV Channels, and Amazon Live Shopping, are now impossible to hide. This includes the Freevee app, which is soon to become defunct. Users will have to get used to seeing these apps on their screens, as the option to remove them is no longer available.
The removal of this feature has caught many Reddit users off guard. Some have expressed their disappointment and confusion, wondering why the apps they had previously hidden are now visible again. Others have gone as far as to say that this change has made the Fire Stick a dealbreaker for them, and they are now considering switching to Google TV. It is worth noting that these updates only apply to Fire OS 6 for the 1st-gen Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire OS 8 for the 2nd-gen Fire TV Stick Max, but there is speculation that it may soon be applied to all Fire TV models.
[This article has been trending online recently and has been generated with AI. Your feed is customized.]
[Generative AI is experimental.]
