It leaked a couple of weeks ago, but now the feature has officially been released. Alexa devices, like the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, can now control the Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Edition televisions. You can ask an Alexa device to control playback, open apps, start movies or shows, and find content. Owners of Fire TV Edition televisions have even more control which include switching inputs, changing tuner channels, and controlling the volume and power.
If you have just one Fire TV, you’re supposed to be able to simply make a request and add “…on Fire TV” to link your Alexa device with your Fire TV. If you have multiple Fire TVs, Fire TV Sticks, or Fire TV Edition televisions, you’ll need to go into the Alexa app and link your Alexa device with a specific Fire TV. This is done by selecting “Music, Video, & Books” from the Alexa app’s menu and then selecting “fire TV” under the “Video” section.
When linking Alexa devices with a Fire TV, each Alexa device can be assigned to control only one Fire TV, but multiple Alexa devices can be set to control a single Fire TV. So if, for example, you have 5 Alexa devices around your house and 2 Fire TVs, with one in the living room and one in a bedroom, you can set your bedroom Alexa device to control your bedroom Fire TV, and then set all other Alexa devices to control the living room Fire TV. This way if you ask to play a movie while in the bedroom, the bedroom Fire TV will react, but if you ask to play something from anywhere else, the main living room Fire TV will react.
Once linked together, you can use the Alexa device to control playback of what is currently playing on the Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, or Fire TV Edition television by saying “Alexa, pause/play/rewind/fast-forward.” If you have multiple devices that can accept these commands, you can specify you want to control the Fire TV by adding “…on Fire TV” to the end of any command. You can also ask to start playing specific content by saying “Alexa, watch [movie/show name].”
In addition to controlling and starting content, you can also ask Alexa devices to launch apps by saying “Alexa, open [app name].” Also available is searching by saying “Search for [query] on Fire TV.” The last command that is available for all Fire TV devices is to simply say “Alexa, go home” to load the Fire TV home screen.
Amazon’s Fire TV Edition televisions have even deeper integration with Alexa devices than the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. With the televisions, you can use Alexa devices to control power by saying “Alexa, turn on Fire TV.” You can also control the volume by saying “Alexa, mute the volume on Fire TV.”
The current input of Fire TV Edition televisions can also be controlled through an external Alexa device by saying something like “Alexa, switch to HDMI one.” Lastly, Alexa can also be used to control the built-in tuner. Since the television is aware of the channel names thanks to its program guide, you can ask to change to a specific channel by saying “Alexa, tune to NBC/CBS/[channel name].“
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Do the commands to open apps work with sideloaded apps as well?
Usually not, but it varies by app. If you can get Alexa on the Fire TV to open the app, then you can usually get Alexa on an external device to open the app.
Have you found a way to get Alexa to put a Fire TV Box or Stick into Sleep Mode? Granted, I’ve only had my Dots and Sticks connected for a few minutes, but haven’t found a way to do that yet.
No, that does not seems to be supported.
Forget to say “on Fire TV” to the Echo Show and you may have an unwanted change to Show. I had to “exercise” the Alexa app on my phone to find the new option. I entered and reentered the various choices in the app and the Fire TV option finally appeared.
Hey Elias,
I still have a few family members who blocked updates starting way back at 5.0.5; will this feature work with older firmware on a FTV 2 box?
Probably not. This seems to be part of the updates that recently rolled out.
Can confirm this does not work on rooted 5.0.5.1 AFTV 2… But it does work on my non rooted (newest software) AFTV stick. It’s the only thing my rooted FireTV is missing
I have 2 dots in the bedroom and 1 works great controlling the fire tv and the other keeps saying “make sure you’ve enabled the app in video settings” which i have. Another room is saying the same thing and ive restarted fire tv boxes and alexa devices. Any sugestions.
Did you go into the app and pair Dots and devices? Elias posted a tutorial here: http://www.aftvnews.com/how-linking-alexa-devices-to-the-amazon-fire-tv-fire-tv-stick-or-fire-tv-edition-television-works/
My 2nd generation FS with Voice Remote responds to the “Alexa, turn on FireTV” command but my original non-voice stick will not. Alexa says she can’t find it. All other commands seem to work on the original Stick though. The only difference between the two Sticks (other than their generations) that I can think of is that the Voice Stick is in an HDMI-CEC port while the Orignal Stick is not, though I can’t see why that would matter.
I’ve got one Dot paired to each Stick, in case anyone was wondering.
Any ideas?
Figured it out. the correct command is “Open FireTV”. That works on both of them.
Have you figured out how to turn off the TV? I have the Fire TV 4K and can’t get power functions to work but other commands work fine.
I can’t seem to get it to power on or off my element tv
Same here. I can’t get it to do the most useful “turn on fire tv” and “turn off fire tv”. Other commands work, but not powering on or off. Please help.
Finally started working. I named my tv “TV”. Now I say turn on Fire TV and it works
Trying everything I can…i have the harmony skill enabled..i am assuming this is causing the problem. Any suggestions let me know.
..i will keep playing around with it
Update for Element Fire TV just installed. Enabled power on feature. Will not work with “turn on TV” or “turn on fire TV”….but does work when I say “open TV”
Still can’t find a command to turn off the TV. Will keep trying.
It doesn’t do music? Like Pandora or even Amazon Music?
I assume this is US only and not the UK?
I’m in the UK and I still can’t see my firesticks’s in the alexa app, infact there is no video section at all in the “Music, Video & Books” menu for me.
Anybody get this to work on the Show? I have linked and unlinked multiple times and I still get “Sorry something went wrong” Do you think this is a conflict with the Harmony Hub?
Amazon must of pushed an update last night because finally my Echo Show is talking to the FireTV.
Is it possible to have it play a specific video or channel from youtube like the Google Home/Chromecast? I couldnt figure it out.
I also tried tried asking it to play movies that were available on Netflix and it would just take me to the details page rather than playing the video. Anyone have better luck?
Anyone know if it controls a fire stick loaded with kodi?
@Freemz everything recently seems to entirely US only set of features.
I would list them but. There have been so many I’ve forgotten half.
Feels like we are an unloved child…..
Hi,
It does seem that way, it’s a shame as I like my Amazon products and surely the UK market is big enough to justify launching here too. I can understand products launching at different times, but software is made and then pushed to devices rather than being a physical item.
How do i unroot if I have a fire tv 2 started on 5.2.1.0. I cant flash 5.0.4_r2 because I will brick the device if i flash below 5.0.5.1.
USA only, yet again! It’s crazy that Amazon keep doing this. Don’t they understand that more than one place speaks English as well?!
I get it to work on my Fire TV Sticks but not on my Fire TV boxes.
Help!
this is not really useful especially if you use kodi , i have been using anymote on an always on android device to control my fire tv with alexa
it is not that great either , i just use wifi control and do not have an anymote device, the good thing about it is that it can do macros so i can say “alexa,tell anymote to turn on kodi” and i made a macro that will set the input to the right input wake the fire stick and navigate to and open kodi
the problem is that all this stuff runs lagdroid and fire tv lags like crazy not to mention the anymote bridge app running on lagdroid also
i suppose it might be able to do similar things on fire television,turn on tv, set input, open an app as a macro but come seriously is anyone really going to buy TV’s made by such bottom of the barrel companies as westinghouse and element? i don’t care if it does have fire tv and alexa integration element and westinghose still are crap makes ,maybe if they start building it into LG and samsungs i would consider it
Does anyone with a rooted first generation Fire TV have this working? I am able able to control all the Fire TV Sticks in the house, but get an error saying “I had trouble communicating with your device, check your network connection and power supply.” Could this have something to do with root and/or updates being blocked?
The lastest rooted version for fire TV 1 doesn’t include this update …
Have same problem with latest rooted AFTV 2nd gen box.
“I had trouble communicating with your device, check your network connection and power supply.”
Amazon support says I have the correct software level. I’d there a fix/patch to let the echo communicate with the AFTV?
Also unrelated but relevant – extended info no longer works with 17.4 Kodi. Tried both 32 and 64 processor releases.