I’m excited to announce the release of my newest Fire TV apps, which I’m calling Loader Shortcut Apps. While these new apps are very simple in their functionality, they will hopefully help Fire TV owners save a lot of time in the long run by helping you access frequently visited areas of the Fire TV more quickly and easily. When a Loader app is launched, it will immediately take you directly to a specific part of the Fire TV. For example, if you’re a heavy user of the Fire TV’s watchlist, then the Watchlist Loader is for you. If you’re always pairing and unpairing Bluetooth headphones, then the Bluetooth Devices Loader will save you countless clicks. If you constantly force quit apps or clear app data/cache, then the Manage Installed Applications Loader takes you directly to your list of installed apps. The list goes on and on as there are 35 different Loader Shortcut Apps in this initial release, so you’ll hopefully find at least one that is useful to you.
There is a wide variety of Loader apps to choose from and I hope to release more in the future if people find them useful. Some of them bubble up parts of the Fire TV home screen, like the Recently Watched Loader which lets you once again jump right back into what you were just watching, since the new interface has buried that row. Others bring things back to the home screen, like the Text Search Loader or the DVR Loader, since the new interface has removed those from the main navigation menu. If you want to browse content more easily, consider using the Movies Loader, TV Shows Loader, or Free Movies & TV Loader which all jump to those former Fire TV menu tabs that still exist but are buried under layers of menus and clicks.
For the tinkerers among you, there are numerous Loader apps that take you directly to commonly used settings. The Network Settings Loader lets you directly configure your connection, or just use the Network Test Loader to quickly check your connection status if you’re having buffering issues. Check storage usage and other device vitals with the Device Info Loader, adjust the AV sync with the Audio/Video Sync Loader, or just quickly see if the next software update is available yet with the Check for Updates Loader. If you or someone in your home has trouble seeing, the Text Banner Settings Loader, Voice Assistant Caption Settings Loader, and VoiceView Settings Loader will help them get to key options without needing to read the tiny text in the numerous settings menus.
If you have the new Fire TV remote with app buttons or a Fire TV Smart TV remote with app buttons, my Loader Shortcut Apps work very well in conjunction with my Remapper app by assigning one of the remote app buttons to launch a Loader app. A particularly useful configuration is assigning a button to open the Apps Loader so that you are always just a single button press away from seeing all of your apps. Another handy one to combine with Remapper is the Settings Loader so that you can jump into a setting, make a change, and jump right back out to what you were previously doing.
All of my Loader Shortcut Apps are free, but you can choose to support the apps, if you’d like, through a small in-app purchase. By default, the apps will occasionally ask if you’d like to support the app through a one-time purchase, which is currently $1.99, before the app loads the intended destination. If you decide to support the app, you will never see the interruption again in that particular Loader app. The purchase does not remove the interruption from all Loader apps, just the one that you are using, but that one purchase applies to all of your Fire TV devices and the app remembers the purchase was made even if it gets uninstalled and reinstalled later.
While the apps seem simple on the surface, it took a lot of work to figure out how to directly access so many different parts of the Fire TV interface, so I hope you understand why I couldn’t just make them completely free. I’d love to rely strictly on in-app donations, as I have done for Downloader and Informer apps, but that’s impossible for these Loader apps because they don’t have an interface where a donation button can be placed. I hope the purchase request isn’t too bothersome and remember that your free no-rush shipping credits will automatically be used for these types of in-app purchases if you have them.
I hope you find these Loader apps useful and I hope they make using your Fire TV just a little more pleasant. You can view the full list of Loader apps here, each with screenshots of their destination screen, or directly on Amazon. Unfortunately, they’re a bit hard to search for, especially through voice, so you may want to send them to your device through the amazon.com page. Lastly, if you like the apps, please consider leaving a review on your favorite ones. It helps the apps gain traction and really helps me learn which ones you find the most useful so that I know the direction to take for my next apps.
@AFTVnews
AFTVnews
Great work, Elias. This very handy!
So only available for Android ???
That’s not good
These are not phone/tablet apps. These apps are only available on Fire TV devices for now. They install on your Fire TV and are launched with the remote to take you to their destination screen.
Excellent! Great work mate, very useful for those of us running leanback launcher. I’ve been looking for a shortcut to open the Official FireTV Appstore.
Is it possible to make a shortcut to open the stock launcher? Sometimes I just need to go back to the stock FireTV dashboard but currently have to go into the Launcher Manager settings, disable the leanback custom launcher, set the default to the stock launcher, press home, then reverse the process when I’m done.
Thanks, I’ll see if I can add those in the next batch.
How about one to open the guide?
+1, that would be useful. But, a great list already Elias for a v1; nice work!
One for the guide was on the top of my list when I first thought up these apps, but, unfortunately, it can’t be done. Amazon has set it so only a system app can launch the guide. I’ll keep an eye on it and if they ever change that I’ll definitely make one for the guide.
I was hoping that once they added the guide button to the new remote that they might have opened it up programmatically as well. This is the one thing I would really like to see. I use my OTA channels and guide frequently enough that having one click access would be nice. I did get one of two though, really like the DVR quick access – thanks!
I use a FLIRC plugged into the FireTV so I can control it with other IR remotes. You can program the FLIRC to generate the guide button, but it has to be done from the command line.
Can an app generate a HID keypress? I can access the one-keypress guide using a FLIRC over USB, so thought maybe that could be a backdoor into triggering the guide… using HID or ADB to trigger it?
I would like to see the Manage Installed Apps have a
Clear All Cache option
which will clear cache on ALL the apps with one click.
I do this frequently one-by-one to free up memory.
It sure would be helpful.
Thanks again for all the good work.
That’s beyond what these apps do, since they’re just for redirecting, but I’ll see if this can be done for a different type of app. I’m not sure if the Fire TV allows the type of permissions needed to achieve this, but I’ll look into it.
would it be possible to make a guide shortcut ?
See two questions above from July 2, 2021 at 6:24 am
Can you make one to link to “Live”? This would help me avoid having to use the Home screen and give quick access to the Guide.
Yeah, I’ll include that in the next batch.
After looking at this further, I’m not sure how much it would help with my use case, which is essentially avoiding the home screen while not switching to a custom launcher. As a Recast user, having the guide and DVR are essential. Live appears to just take us back to that option on the main screen.
I tried “Launch at Boot” to open your Apps app, but while it sees Downloader it doesn’t find any of your new apps – is there something different in how they’re setup where they wouldn’t be recognized? The second issue is while it does “Launch at Boot” the option to ‘launch after device wakes up’ doesn’t do anything.
I was hoping to be able to use Apps to avoid the home screen, but long press of the Home button still seems like the best option. One great thing is I realized that having your DVR app finally makes this viable since it has a link to the guide in it and I don’t have any reason to go back to the home screen! Thanks!
Any chance of a shortcut to change output resolution? I switch often between 12-bit 4K and 8-bit 720p for native upscaling.
I don’t think that’ll be possible but I’ll definitely look into it for the next set of apps.
Thanks! Even ‘hidden’ resolutions like 1080p30 would be great.
DVR quick access… THANK YOU! Amazing how Amazon just refuses to make the Recast easy to work with. This DVR shortcut is MASSIVELY appreciated. Thanks!
Elias, I’ve tried the DVR shortcut with Wolf and ATF launchers but I am greeted with a “oops, something went wrong” message. Any ideas?
If you have the stock launcher disabled in any way, it’s not going to work because the DVR listings are shown by the stock launcher. Also, which model device do you have and does it have the new or old interface?
First off, thank you for your quick reply. I have both the lite and 4K versions running on the new interface. Additionally, the Recently Watched shortcut does the same
can this be ported to reg android tv?
When I have a bit of time, I’ll look into making these work for Android TV and put them in the Google Play store.
Many thanks for the DVR launcher. It’s landed a place at the front of my app list, so it’s right there on the top menu where Amazon should have had it all along. It’s omission has been my biggest peeve with my Recast.
How about a Closed Caption toggle or at least a shortcut into the captions menu?
I’m glad you’re finding it useful enough to put it at the front. Making one for CLosed Captions was definitely high on my list but, unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out a way to load the Closed Caption menu. The next time I work on more Loader apps, I’ll give it another go to make a Closed Captions Loader to see if I missed something.
I am an android developer too. It must be so tedious for you to create so many apps at once. Although the app may only be a single activity app, each of them require some work on app store listing and description. Respect
Please create one for Blink Camera App, as it can only be accessed via voice request now.
Hi! Nice work!!! I have to go to the display settings every time i start my stick to change some display option, a shortcut for this setting would be so great for me. Do you plan to create it one day?
Thanks!