This guide will walk you through the steps of installing and setting up a custom alternate home screen launcher on your Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Cube, or Fire TV Smart TV. This is a new method developed in July 2023 by several XDA Forum members that is currently the simplest way to bypass Amazon’s recent blacklist block of the Launcher Manager app.

I’m referring to this as the “Forever Loop” method because it uses a looping ADB command that runs forever in the background of your Fire TV every 10 seconds to keep Launcher Manager from being disabled. Credit goes to XDA users Finnzz and virtuacool for being the primary developers of this method and to tp11075, graffix420, Pro-me3us, and others for their contributions as well.

Warning:

If you follow this guide to make an alternate custom launcher work on your Fire TV device, it will make several changes that you need to be aware of. First, your Fire TV will no longer receive software updates. Second, your Fire TV will no longer go to sleep. Third, you will have difficulty easily accessing portions of your Fire TV that are dependent on the default Home screen, like the Appstore app and the Settings area. All of these compromises are easily reverted, either permanently or temporarily, but they will be affecting your device while your custom launcher is working. See the last step of this guide for how to revert the changes. Also, note that Amazon is very protective of the Fire TV home screen so it is likely that this method will stop working at some point.

1. Enable “ADB Debugging” on your Fire TV under Settings > My Fire TV > Developer Options. If you don’t see the “Developer options” menu, follow this guide to reveal the menu.
   
2. Install the alternate launcher that you want to use. Wolf Launcher is a popular choice, which you can sideload by entering 680861 (or aftv.news/680861 ) into the Downloader app. See this guide for detailed sideloading instructions if you need it.
   
3. Install Launcher Manager by entering 436966 (or aftv.news/436966) into the Downloader app. See this guide for detailed sideloading instructions if you need it.
   
4. Open Launcher Manager from your list of Fire TV apps.
   
5. In the menu on the right, navigate to Launcher Options > Home Button Hook and turn on both the “Home Button Hook” and the “Use ADB for Home” options. When you select these options for the first time, Launcher Manager will likely close and reopen. This is normal behavior. Just go back in and try turning the options on again and they should turn on the second time you try.
   
6. If you see a prompt asking you to allow debugging, check the “Always allow…” checkbox and select the “OK” option.
   
7. Press Back a few times to return to Launcher Manager’s main menu and navigate to Launcher Options > Custom Launcher Options > Active launcher. From here, select your desired alternate launcher.
   
8. Press the Home button on your remote to test that your alternate launcher is working correctly. If your alternate launcher opens, return to Launcher Manager and continue with the guide. If your alternate launcher does not open, start this guide over from the beginning.
   
9. Back in Launcher Manager, navigate to Other Settings > Screensaver > Sleep Timeout and set it to zero. This will prevent your Fire TV from going to sleep, even if you turn your TV off. This is necessary because your Fire TV will disable your custom launcher if it goes to sleep.
   
10. For the next and final step, you will need to enter a long command on your Fire TV. The easiest way to do this is to use the Fire TV Remote app, from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, on a phone or tablet. This will allow you to copy and paste the long command without needing to type it. If you haven’t done so yet, install the Fire TV Remote app and pair it to your Fire TV through the “Remote” tab along the bottom. When the time comes to enter the long command, navigate to this guide on your phone or tablet, copy the command, and then tap the Keyboard icon in the upper right of the Fire TV Remote app and paste the command.
    
11. Back in Launcher Manager’s main menu, select Other Settings > ADB Commands.
    
12. Select the “+” button in the top-right corner and enter whatever you want for the label of the new ADB command.
    
13. Enter the following long command in the command line:
    while sleep 10; do ((++n%30)) || am force-stop com.amazon.tv.launcher; pm clear com.amazon.device.software.ota; pm clear com.amazon.adep; done
    Once again, the best way to do this is to use the Fire TV Remote app on a phone or tablet to copy and paste the command.
    
14. Check the box for “Execute on Boot” and select Save. Now select the newly added command once to start it. You won’t see anything happen, but it will be running as long as you select it once.
    
15. Your custom launcher should now be working when you press the Home button on your remote and the extra ADB command you just added will prevent your Fire TV from updating or disabling your custom launcher.

    If you ever want to temporarily use the default launcher without it suddenly closing, you can do so by disabling ADB debugging from the Fire TV settings menu, but note that you shouldn’t leave your Fire TV idle in this state or all your custom launcher changes might get reverted. When you’re done using the default launcher, re-enable ADB debugging and then open Launcher Manager, navigate to Other Settings > ADB Commands, and select the command you created in this guide to get it running in the background again.

    To permanently revert the changes, open Launcher Manager, go to Other Settings > Screensaver > Sleep Timeout and set it back to 20 and then uninstall Launcher Manager.