While the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV stick usually run smoothly, sometimes they need a swift kick in the reset button. Here’s how to get your Fire TV back to a factory-fresh state.
Why Reset Your Fire TV?
When it comes to devices with embedded operating systems, sometimes there’s just a glitch in the machine you can’t explain, and Amazon’s Fire TV line is no exception. Maybe a certain button on the remote just doesn’t work right. Maybe it refuses to recognize your Wi-Fi network (not that we’re writing this guide as a result of that happening or anything). Maybe despite entering your Amazon Prime credentials a dozen times in a row, it just won’t phone home and load your vast Prime library.
While we don’t encourage people to take the scorched-Earth approach to fixing their gadgets, unfortunately that’s sometimes the only solution that works. Whatever your ghost-in-the-machine glitch might be, there’s a very good chance that a factory reset is the key to eradicating it.
The price for resetting your Fire TV device back to a showroom-fresh state is that you need to go through and tweak all your settings as if you just plugged the device in for the first time: Wi-Fi credentials, Amazon credentials, any customization you’ve made, and so on. Furthermore, you’ll need to download all content again like apps and stored media.
If you’re not put off by the hassle and you’re ready for that new-car smell, let’s reset your Fire TV.
How to Reset Your Fire TV & Fire TV Stick
First, let’s get one thing out of the way. Even though we opened this tutorial with a joke about giving your Fire TV a swift kick in the reset button, we can’t actually suggest that course of action. Do we say this because it would be far too difficult to land a well placed kick into a tiny and recessed reset button hole? Who are we to judge your kicking skills? The real reason is the Fire TV doesn’t have a physical reset button. There are only two ways to reset it: via the System menu and via remote control button combination.
If you want to jump right to the reset option, you can do so by holding down the Back button and the Right button on your Fire TV remote for 10 seconds until the reset screen pops up.
You can also take the longer route, through the System menu, by navigating down the sidebar menu until you reach “Settings”.
There scroll right until you see the “System” menu.
Scroll down through the slide out menu until you see “Reset to Factory Defaults” and select it.
When prompted, enter your PIN code (if you’ve set a parental/security PIN code on your device).
A note regarding the security PIN–if you’re resetting your Fire TV because it won’t connect to your Wi-Fi you’re in a bit of a bind here. You cannot reset your PIN-protected Amazon Fire TV/TV Stick unless the device can phone home and confirm your PIN is correct. This is a ridiculous situation that necessitates you connecting your Fire TV to another network (or using a network cable to plug it directly into your router).
Select “Reset”.
Your Amazon Fire TV will restart, you’ll run through the whole setup routine again as if the device is fresh out of the box, and–fingers crossed–the problem that prompted you to reset the device is gone for good.