Kodi (previously known as XBMC) is a powerful, if not a little clunky, media player that lets you access a huge range of media content, including film and TV. It’s great on a PC or laptop but really comes into its own on your living room TV, which is easy to achieve thanks to modern, cut-price streaming sticks. Here I’m looking at installing Kodi on the Amazon Fire TV Stick.
Loading Kodi onto your Fire TV Stick is far easier than it used to be thanks to the addition of file managers on Amazon’s app store. Here I’ll show you how to install Kodi on the Fire TV Stick without any fuss, then show you how to create a shortcut to launch Kodi whenever you want and finally show you how to find the best add-ons for the best content.
I’ve done every step of this guide myself using an Amazon Fire TV Stick and the current stable version of Kodi (Isengard), so I know that it works. If you have any queries or problems though please leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
How to install Kodi to your Fire TV stick (the easy way)
1. Plug your Amazon Fire TV stick into your TV and plug the USB power cable into a spare USB port or use the power adaptor. Change to the appropriate input and familiarise yourself with the remote. This has a four-way directional control, with a select button in the middle, we'll also be using the Back and Home buttons on the top row. If you haven't done so already use the setup process to get a Wi-Fi connection.
2. First you’ll need to allow the installation of apps from unknown sources. You can do this by going to System/Settings/Developer options. Find ‘Apps from unknown sources’, which should be switched OFF, and turn it ON, then say yes in the pop-up box. We recommend you go back and turn this security setting back to OFF after you’re done with this tutorial. If you want an easy way to launch Kodi also turn ON ADB Debugging while you’re here.
3. Next you want to install ES File Explorer. You can try to find this via the Fire TV Stick’s search function (at the top of the main menu) but it didn't come up in the results for me. Instead head to Amazon using your PC’s browser, here’s a link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008K6HN8I, and if your Fire TV Stick is registered to your Amazon account you should be able to ‘Deliver to’ the device using the option on the right-hand side of the page.
4. Head back to your Fire TV and see if ES File Explorer has appeared under Apps in the main menu. If it’s not under Your Apps Library then you may need to manually sync the device to get this working properly. Head to Settings/My Account and choose Sync Amazon Content.
5. Open ES File Explorer under Apps, select Favorite and then select Add. In the pop-up box select the first field to bring up the onscreen keyboard. Enter ‘http://kodi.tv/download’ and then select Next, the text you’ve entered will disappear but don’t worry, now type ‘Kodi’ into the next box and hit Next again. Press right to select Add and select this.
6. Essentially you’ve just added a web link to ES File Explorer for the Kodi downloads page. Scroll down the menu on the left-hand side of ES File Explorer to the bottom, where your Kodi link has appeared and select it. Using the direction control on the remote you can then browse around the webpage.
Your Fire TV Stick is based on Android and so find the Kodi Android apps and select the ARM version. It will then download the latest version of the app to the stick. It’s worth making a note of the name of your Kodi release version for future reference, the current version is Isengard, for instance.
Then select the Open File option and then select Install. A dialog box will open with app permissions, press down on the remote until the options at the bottom highlight and then select Install again.
7. Once done, Kodi has been installed to your Fire TV Stick. You can launch it immediately after install but it’s not easy to launch it from the main interface as you have to go to Settings/Applications/Manage Installed Applications and then scroll down and select Kodi.
An easier way to launch Kodi
Using FireStarter you can make Kodi launch by simply double tapping the Home button on your Fire TV remote, which far easier than delving into menus every time. There are more complex options to add Kodi to the homescreen but they’re a pain to get working and this is a much better option if Kodi is your go-to app.
1. First make sure that ADB Debugging is turned ON, see step one above if you didn’t do this already. It will need to stay on for this shortcut to carry on working.
2. Then add a new Favourite to ES File Explorer, following the same instructions as above, but instead entering http://tinyurl.com/ERkodi into the Path box and firestarter into the Name box. The actual web address is longer so we’ve used a TinyURL to save you some typing, the full URL is https://github.com/sphinx02/FireStarter/releases.
3. Again use the directional controller to navigate the webpage, you need to select the latest FireStarter APK file but we found this very tricky to do with the controller. If you have the same problem try moving the highlight over the Fork button in the top-right corner and then pressing down once and you should land on the latest APK file.
4. As before download, open and install the APK file to your Fire TV Stick. Click through the app permissions and then choose to Open the app. Otherwise, you can open it from Settings/Applications/Manage Installed Applications.
5. In Firestarter go to Settings and select Home Button Single Click Application. Head up the list and select No Action. You can then scroll down to a new option, Home Button Double Click Application, and select that and choose Kodi.
Now a double-click on the Home button, from anywhere, will launch Kodi.
Installing the best Kodi add-ons
Kodi is great for accessing your media files on a local network but the real draw is add-ons that give you access to a vast array of streamed content. There’s a lot of add-ons that are officially supported by Kodi but to get more you’ll need to add a new ‘repository’ such as SuperRepo, we’ll show you how.
1. Launch Kodi on your Amazon Fire Stick by either double-tapping Home (if you followed our example above) or by heading to Settings/Applications/Manage Installed Applications.
In Kodi use the directional control on your remote to head right to System and then select File Manager from the menu below. Select Add source from the menu on the left. Select the box with <None> written in it and type in http://srp.nuusing the onscreen keyboard and select Done. Enter a name in the bottom box that you’ll remember, we simply went with SRP. Click OK.
2. Hit back until you’re back on the main menu and then go to System, Settings and choose Add-ons. Click through the advice on side tabbed windows, choose Install from zip file and SRP (or whatever you called it).
3. Select the version of Kodi you’re using, probably Isengard at the time of writing, you should have noted this down earlier when you downloaded Kodi. Then Select All and the file in that folder, starting superrepo. If you go wrong select the dots at the top to navigate back.
You’ll then see pop-ups appear showing Kodi downloading and installing the add-on. Hit the back button until you get to the main menu. You can now get extra add-ons by selecting the appropriate section and choosing add-ons.
4. For example, go to Video, select Add-ons, select Get More. A list of add-ons will appear that includes all the new add-ons from SuperRepo. Select one and then select Install, hit back to the main menu, select Video, then Add-ons and then you can select it to access the content. Each add-on has its own file system and you'll need to dig around in the folders to find what you want.
Please note that many add-ons contain content that isn’t officially licensed and accessing such content could be illegal. In short if the content is free, but looks too good to be true, then it probably is.
