AMAZON FIRE TV STICK
Use it to play y your own videos
If you use an Amazon Fire TV Stick to stream films or TV from online sources, you’ll already know that it has internal storage that can accommodate installed video and audio apps, as well as games. But did you know that you can also access that storage yourself, and use it to host your own videos, photos and music?
All you need do is install a couple of apps (ES File Explorer and VLC Media Player) from the Amazon App Store, which is built into the Fire TV Stick itself. Once you’ve e done so, you can transfer files wirelessly from your computer tto your stick, so you can access them e em on your TV whenever you want. t. .
Space is limited, so it makes sense not to try transferring hours of unedited footage. Our advice is to work with something you’ve trimmed down so you can maximise the variety of videos you transfer. Before we start, a note about the ‘four-way controller’ that we refer to later. This is the circular control button that clicks up, down, left and ririg at the top of the Fire TV remote control (see photo left). The Select button is the large circular button inside it.
1 Install ES File Explorer
Switch your TV to whichever input your Fire TV stick is connected to and wait for it to start up. Use the remote control to move left to the magnifier, then search for ES File Explorer using the on-screen keyboard. You’ll notice the list of results updates in real time. In our experience, typing ES was sufficient to pull up the result we wanted. Use the four-way controller to move down and highlight it, then press the centre button (Select) to open it.
Press Select again on the next page, where ES File Explorer is highlighted (see screenshot right), to open its full page. You’ll see ‘Get’ already highlighted, so press Select a third time to install it. The app is free but it offers in-app purchases (you won’t need to buy any of them). Once it’s installed, the Get button changes to Open. Click Select again to launch the app.
As an Android app, ES File Explorer needs permission to access your Fire TV Stick’s internal storage. If you’re happy to proceed, press down (ie the bottom of the four-way controller) to highlight the Agree button, then press Select. On the pop-up that appears, confirm that you’re happy for the app to access photos, media and files on your device by clicking Allow on the overlay that appears.
You now need to agree to the Terms of Service. Press down until you’ve highlighted ‘Terms of Service’ at the bottom of the page and press Select to open them. If you agree with the contents, press the remote’s back button, then use the top of the four-way controller to go back up to ‘Agree and Continue’ and press Select to proceed.
Finally, you’ll be asked whether you want to trial the paid-for features or restore previous purchases. If you don’t want to do either, move to the ‘x’ in the top-right corner and press the Select button to go straight into ES File Explorer.
2 Check your internal storage
Now that you have ES File Explorer up and running, you can explore the internal storage on your Fire TV Stick. At the moment, the contents might not make a lot of sense as it’s largely made up of system folders. At the top of the screen, you’ll see how much storage you have on your device. As you can see in the screenshot below, we have 2.96GB free of the original 5GB. This is what we’ll use to store our own media.
If you don’t have much, consider uninstalling some of your apps – or at least clearing out their cache, which is the temporary data the apps store on your Fire TV Stick so they don’t need to download it anew every time you launch the app.
To remove apps, press Home on your Fire TV remote, then click across to the far right of the top menu and press Select when you’ve highlighted Settings. Scroll along to Applications on the sub-menu and press Select, then down to Manage Installed Applications, and press Select.
Scroll down through the list of applications and keep an eye on the Size and Cache measurements that appear to the right, as you can see in the screenshot at the bottom-left of the page. If you don’t use an app and you want to remove it, press Select when it’s highlighted, followed by Uninstall. If you only want to delete its cache, select the app then move down to ‘Clear cache’ and press Select again.
Note that you can’t remove Amazon’s pre-installed apps, only those you’ve installed yourself. Once you’ve finished, return to ES File Explorer from its entry on your Fire TV homepage.
3 Transfer your videos
Press left on the four-way controller, then move down to Network and press Select to open the sub-menu. Within the sub-menu, move down to ‘View on PC’ and press Select. The name of your current network will be displayed on your screen.
Press down on the four-way controller and press Select when Turn On is highlighted to enable the internal FTP server. FTP, which stands for File Transfer Protocol, is a standard system used for transferring files between computers – and, although it’s more often used to upload files to a website, you can use it to send files to any other machine on your local network as long as it has the necessary FTP server software installed. ES File Explorer is providing that software.
Make a note of the numeric address that will now be displayed on your screen (see screenshot below), including the digits after the colon. This address is accessible only on your local network.
Leave ES File Explorer running on your TV, and open a new File Explorer window on the computer where your
videos are stored. Type the full address into the address bar. In our case, this is ftp://192.168.1.120:3721/, although this may be different on your device, depending on how your network has been set up and what address your router has assigned to the Fire TV Stick on your network.
Windows File Explorer will refresh to show the folders stored on your stick, as you can see in the screenshot above.
Open the Movies folder within the main pane of the File Explorer window, then open a second File Explorer window beside it by pressing Ctrl+n. In this second window, navigate to the folder containing the video you want to transfer, then drag it across into the Movies folder that’s still open in the first window. Repeat this process for any other video you want to copy to your Stick.
4 Play back your videos
Return to your TV and press Home on the Fire TV remote control (the button has an icon of a house on it). Scroll back to the magnifying glass on the far left of the top menu and use the on-screen keyboard to search for VLC.
Scroll down the results list to VLC Media Player then press Select. This opens the ‘VLC for Fire’ overview. Press Select with the VLC logo selected, then press Select again to activate the Get button on the ‘VLC for Fire’ detail page. This installs the app.
Once it’s installed, the Get button will become an Open button. It will be prehighlighted, so press the Select button to launch VLC and, as you did with ES File Manager, press Select on the following page to allow access to photos, media and files on your device.
The first thing VLC does is scan your stick for existing media. This may take a few seconds to complete but, when it’s done, the files you dragged across should appear in the ‘All videos’ section at the top of the main pane. Press right on the four-way controller to open this folder, then highlight the video you want to play (see screenshot below) and press Select again.
If your video hasn’t been found, instead press down on the four-way controller until you’ve highlighted Browsing in the sidebar, then press Select twice to open the stick’s internal memory. Scroll down through the list of folders until you reach Movies and press Select again to view its contents.
5 Manage space on your stick
Your Fire TV Stick has limited internal space, so it’s important to use it wisely. The more media you transfer to it, the fewer apps you can install, and vice versa. It makes sense to get into the habit of deleting files when you no longer need them.
To do so, open ES File Explorer and again navigate to your Movies folder by first pressing left on the four-way controller to move across to the sidebar, then moving down to Local. Once it’s highlighted, press Select to expand it, then move down to Internal Storage and press Select again.
The block that highlights what’s been selected will skip across to the app’s main pane. Use the four-way controller to move it down to Movies, then press Select. Now highlight the file you want to delete and press and hold the Select button. After a second or so, the file will be overlaid with a green tick and the menu at the bottom of the screen will change to a series of file-management tools. Use the controller to highlight Delete on the toolbar, then press Select.
ES File Explorer will now offer to move the file to the Recycle Bin. Doing so won’t recover the space it uses, so instead press Select, which removes the tick from ‘Move to recycle bin’ and changes the header of the floating window to Delete. Press Select to remove the file from your stick and reclaim the space it occupied.