How to fix an empty or buggy Apps row on the Fire TV home screen

The Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick suffer from an issue that occasionally causes the “Your Apps & Games” row on the home screen to either be empty or not be in the order that you configured. The issue seems especially common on the new Fire TV 3 right after you complete the initial setup process, where the row is completely blank. Here’s the way to fix this issue to restore quick access to your installed apps.

  1. To fix an empty or incorrectly ordered apps row on the home screen, go to the “Settings” section of the Fire TV and select the “Applications” menu.
  2. Scroll down to the bottom and select the “Manage Installed Applications” menu.
  3. Scroll down and select the “Appstore” option.
  4. Select all three options: “Force stop” then “Clear Data” and then “Clear cache”
  5. At this point, your apps row is likely fixed, but to be extra sure, back out to the main settings area again, select the “My Account” menu all the way on the right and select the “Sync Amazon Content” option.
  6. Lastly, it’s a good idea to restart the Fire TV by backing out to the settings area one last time, selecting the “Device” menu, and selecting the “Restart” option near the bottom.
  7. When your Fire TV restarts, leave it alone for about a minute to give it a chance to populate the Apps row. It does this by downloading information from your Amazon account, so, depending on what else it’s doing in the background, it may not happen instantly. If you’re having trouble getting specific apps to appear on the home screen, follow this guide.

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51 comments
  1. Wire says:

    Any update on stb emulado, can’t loads.

  2. Jon says:

    Great write up. This is exactly what I did but had to figure it out on my own. Been a while since I had to do that. Glad I still have it in me. Usually rely on you! Ha, great work. Must be widespread?

  3. Tony Ramirez says:

    What fixed it for me was easy. I just went into about sync amazon content.

  4. Roy says:

    It does not work for my 1st gen fire TV stick. It works on fire TV 3 though.

    • KH says:

      If anyone still experiencing the same problem, I found the solution for all Gens. First, go to settings > Applications > appstore > Hide Cloud apps (ON). This will fix your issue instantly.

      • JC says:

        This worked for my 1st generation fire stick here in Southern California, USA.

      • Mark B says:

        Nice Fix. None of the other fixes worked. That worked instantly.

      • JERRY says:

        Awesome this work with my new firestick 2018. I woke up one morning and the firestick updated I think but all my apps where gone(huden/invisible ) the only way to get to them was thou manage your apps in the settings folder I try all the above nothing work un till I saw your comment thanks so much I was lost (If anyone still experiencing the same problem, I found the solution for all Gens. First, go to settings > Applications > appstore > Hide Cloud apps (ON). This will fix your issue instantly.)

        • PJ999 says:

          Thank you Jerry. This fix worked for me. The only thing I would recommend is after the fix, unplug the device from the mains for a minute or so and then reboot. Worked for me perfectly afterwards. Thank you again.

  5. Frank says:

    Thanks for sharing. I was only able to resolve this by reseting the Fire TV. Does anybody have an issue with the network connection too. I use the adapter to connect the Fire TV with a LAN cable. But every time (day) after bringing the Fire TV back from standby the connection is lost and I need to unplug and plug in back the LAN cable to fix it,

  6. stinky says:

    thx, worked for me

  7. NELU says:

    Unfortunately for me the apps row is still empty. What else can I do?

  8. Aileen says:

    Problem not
    Fixed! My apps and games row still empty,..plsssss help me.

  9. Faraday65 says:

    I have the new 4k model. I believe I’m using it in the wrong region and therefore the app bar and app section is black. Anyone know how to fix that?

  10. Kieran says:

    This did not solve my problem either, I have the Fire TV 3 and am in Australia. One of the posters above state they believe their issue was not fixed due to their region. Where are others who are still having problems?

    • Leon says:

      please tell me you found a solution to this? I have an empty apps row on the home page and empty apps tab. My Prime videos all give me the location error 5505 which could be related to this as mentioned by other. Any info would be helpful

  11. Samantha says:

    Im having the same issue. I have tried the above but still nothing. I have factory reset 3 times. I also live in Australia.

  12. Faraday 65 says:

    I live in South Africa

  13. Samantha says:

    I was having this issue. I just went to Amazon.com.au >Content and devices. Then under content and devices there are setting, click on settings and change your country region to Unite states. I just put Los Angeles as the address and city, Los Angeles, state California and post code 90210. When you do this it will remove your from the Amazon Australia website. So if you purchase stuff you may want to make another account for your firetv thats US and keep your Australian one for shopping.

  14. Shan says:

    Worked for me, thank you.

  15. Denese says:

    Thanks so much! It is now working again. :)

  16. Earl Thomas says:

    This is not working guys.

  17. Rick S. says:

    I also have the blank apps and games row. Also ‘APPS’ between tv shows and settings is also empty. I have apps installed but nothing there. I a am using the fire tv 4k 3rd gen version out of region. I am using a amazon.com account with the regions set to USA. Like others I have factory reset and done what was suggested here with the same results. Any Ideas ?

  18. Earl Thomas says:

    Still not working for me fellas. I have a ftv 3.

  19. Paddy says:

    Didn’t work for me and I’m in Ireland

  20. Roger says:

    This didn’t work for me. I tried everything and the row still will not show up. Frustrating!!

  21. SW Wong says:

    Another method that worked for me is to access your Amazon account and changed the country to United States under this link: https://www.amazon.com/mycd

    Select the Settings tab and change the country settings.
    Hope that helps.

    • Earl Thomas says:

      This worked like a charm. Change country to USA then follow guide as explained above and you are good to go. Thanks a million.

  22. Linda Ferraro says:

    Amazing! Thank you, I have been reading everything and no one had the right answer, except you! All my apps are now back in my Apps library and I no longer get the “App not found” error message. Thank you!!

  23. Shee says:

    check for an update:
    Select Settings > Device > About from the Fire TV menu.
    Look for the Software Version section to view the software version currently installed on your Fire TV.
    Select Check for System Update to see if a software update is available for your device.

    If an update is available, it starts downloading automatically. After the download is complete, select Install System Update to install the update.

  24. Joel says:

    SO, I am in Canada, using Fire TV 4K bought in the US, still can’t get the YOUR apps and games row to populate, I can see the device in both my .ca and .com listings on AMazon…
    PLease help

  25. B says:

    Hello all, I was having the same issue and tried everything but a factory reset. My problem started with apps and became more prevalent with prime video. There were noted issues with Netflix customers showing the same blank icon issue and the resolution was dns. So I swapped networks to my phone (tethering) and all icons were populated. This lead me to try a manual ip setting to a public dns and voilà all icons populated.

    Give this a shot as well and set a public dns – I used google – 8.8.8.8.

    -B

    • Lee says:

      This fixed it for me. None of the other things worked. I tried my cell phone hotspot to test the theory and sure enough apps started populating. For the permanent fix I went into my internet modem and changed the DNS in the DHCP settings to Google’s 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Then I reconnected my FireTV to my home wireless and everything is good.

      Nice troubleshooting B! I was about to return my FireTV stick as defective.

  26. denise says:

    I just restarted my fire stick and that solved the problem.

  27. Temuulen says:

    Guys just change your region to USA and force close and clear the data of Appstore in applications and that is it

  28. Shaniqua says:

    Omg thank you so much i was so worried

    • Gabriel Barnabe says:

      All i did was deregister and registered in my daughters account. Everything populated again. Then went back and registered in my account again…. Simple..

  29. Amy says:

    Yeah, none of the fixes worked for me. But after reading the messages from people saying they were in Australia and having this issue I decided to check my content and devices on my amazon account.

    They weren’t there lol.

    I’d at some point linked them to the US site and I’m in the UK.

    It let me transfer them over to .co.uk and now everything works great.

    Good luck everyone. I know how frustrating it is!

  30. PJ999 says:

    Just an update on my previous post. I previously clear the cache and forced close all apps. I synced the account and rebooted. It worked. However within a week I had the same issue again. I reset the firestick to factory default and installed a third party launcher. I reinstalled all my apps however the launcher kept disconnecting any stream that I was using and the only solution was to delete my amazon account. I created a new account and then reset my firestick. Over an hour of reinstalling my apps and its back to normal. Drastic I know but it was the only solution that actually worked…..and I tried a lot of solutions!

    • Costas says:

      Do you have apps from only one geografical region or from different regions?
      I’ve got apps from 8 different regions and I suspect this is what triggers the problem at my end. It all started suddenly last week in both my fire devices, after 5 years of smooth function.

      • PJ999 says:

        Hi Costas. My Amazon account was a co.uk account. My apks were installed either from Downloader or Fi####nked. I changed my Amazon account recently from co.uk to .de because of Brexit. I feel this is where my issue started. Despite changing back to co.uk and resetting the device, it did not rectify the issue. I reset the device a total of 4 times in total. I logged onto my account on my PC and did some tweaks but unfortunately any remedial action did not recover the missing apps and games. It remained blank each time. Hope you find this helps. I would suggest one account for shopping and another for streaming.

        • PJ999 says:

          Further to my post Costas, I use apps mainly from UK and USA and I always use a VPN set to thd location of whichever app I’m using.

  31. Rione says:

    Hi. I feel like my problems started when I bought the stack tv app in Canada. Has anyone noticed anything similar. I can’t get it going no matter what I try. Tried every single fix suggested. Help.

  32. PJ999 says:

    Hi Rione
    I’m not familiar with Stack so I’m assuming its an IPTV app. Can you open the app and change the player to maybe VLC or another player? and have you tried syncing?

  33. CHARLES FINNELL says:

    Going to your Amazon apps and hitting four stop then clear data then clear cache.. then go to restart.. and it would be best if you would unplug it for 15 seconds from the wall.. works every time.. thanks my man you’re awesome

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