A feature snatched, and a lesson learned
Amazon’s streaming sticks are some of the more popular (and affordable) options around, and no matter what features you’re looking for, one of the best Fire TV devices should meet your requirements. Like many of its peers, Fire TV remotes come equipped with quick-launch buttons for streaming apps like Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. If you didn’t love your remote’s initial lineup, remapping those buttons had been possible using a workaround, but a new software update from Amazon is now plugging the loophole.
For the last couple of years, Elias Saba’s Remapper utility allowed customizing the behavior of these app shortcut buttons, so you could open any installed app with one click of the Fire TV remote. Amazon has never seemed super enthusiastic about button remapping utilities, and updating the Fire TV Stick 4K Max to software version 7.6.2.4 prevents Remapper from working. Although only one Fire TV model has received this damning update so far, Amazon’s past efforts to curb remapping are sufficient reason to believe similar patches for other models will follow.
Saba’s Remapper worked by impersonating the apps linked to your remote’s buttons — it simply kept the button’s original app package name, but launched another app of the user’s choice. To avoid package name conflict, Fire TV users had to make a compromise and uninstall the app originally linked to a button if they wanted to remap it.
Amazon caught on one year later, implementing a system that checked if the app was installed from the Amazon Appstore. Remapper’s developer added a few additional steps to bypass this check, tricking the hardware into believing Remapper was an official Amazon Appstore installation. Unfortunately, there’s no immediate workaround to Amazon’s latest patch, in this new software update.
Fire TV owners missing their customizable buttons can buy the Alexa Voice Remote Pro, which includes two buttons with official remapping support. The option didn’t exist when Saba created Remapper, but we also wish Amazon would just let the other remotes retain unofficial remapping support.
