When it comes to streaming dongles, Amazon Fire TV Sticks are some of the most popular streaming devices on the market. Amazon maintains its own fork of Android called Fire OS for these devices, which lacks Google apps and has a completely different user interface than Google’s Android TV operating system. If you have a 3rd generation Fire TV Stick or its light variant and you are not satisfied with the out-of-the-box software experience, now you can swap the Amazon firmware for the built-in Android 11 ROM and enjoy the vanilla Android TV experience.
Notably, Amazon does not officially allow unlocking the bootloader of consumer Fire TV devices. This is where the XDA community comes in. In a recent article, XDA Senior Member k4y0z highlights an exploit, using which you can unlock the bootloader of your Fire TV Stick 3 (codename “sheldonp”) and Fire TV Stick Lite (code- name “sheldon”). Although the process does not require you to unmount the target device, it does require an older version of Fire OS (< 7.2.7.3) and Linux as the host OS. The developer has also compiled a unified TWRP build for the device duo. You can install it immediately after unlocking the bootloader and gaining root access.
Unlocking the Bootloader and TWRP for the Fire TV Stick 3rd Generation (Lite)
Now that you have a working TWRP, the next step is of course a custom ROM. Senior XDA member Rortiz2 has been compiling unofficial LineageOS builds for various Fire HD tablets for some time, and now the developer has released the first LineageOS 18.1 ROM based on Android TV 11 for the 3rd Gen Fire TV Stick. (Lite). Although the SoC is 64-bit compatible, the Android operating system of these models works in 32-bit mode. Hence, you should opt for the ARM variants of Google app packages after flashing the ROM.
Most things seem to work, according to the developer. However, you may find that Netflix crashes after playing something, but a restart should fix that. The only major issue with this version is that SELinux is set to permissive.
This is an exciting development for Fire TV Stick 3 (Lite) enthusiasts and owners, allowing them to have the best of both worlds: a convenient Amazon streaming dongle and a full-fledged Android TV experience with the Play Store. If you are interested, head over to the thread linked below and read all the requirements and step-by-step installation instructions needed to install Android TV 11.
Unofficial LineageOS 18.1 for Fire TV Stick 3rd Generation (Lite)
