Firestick TV is a nifty and efficient device that runs quite fast. But there are a lot of people who over time start to experience several performance issues. When your Firestick TV becomes too slow, then your streaming experience will be massively affected. There’s just nothing more annoying than streaming buffering videos. Besides, a slow Firestick also means that you won’t be able to stream high-definition content. The great news is that there are some steps you can follow to speed up Firestick.
Keep in mind that we’re not saying all of these steps will work. More often than not, it’s the combination of several processes that gets your Firestick performing like never before.
So, even if some of the tips we give you here don’t do the trick, keep trying additional steps and eventually, you’ll see some improved performance for your device.
Without further ado, here are the main steps you can take to speed up your Firestick.
1. Turn Off Data Monitoring
Data Monitoring is a Firestick TV feature that can be useful to people who use limited data plans. It simply tracks your bandwidth and determines how much data you’re using for each app.
While this may help you sometimes, it also slows down your Firestick TV and as such, you may end up experiencing a lot of performance issues.
Well, you can turn this off by following the steps here below:
- Hit the Home button on your remote and head to Settings
- Scroll across and locate Preferences
- On the menu that appears, go to Privacy Settings
- Scroll down until you see Data Monitoring
- Click it and turn it Off
2. Turn On Do Not Interrupt
Every time a notification comes into your Firestick TV, it eats away bandwidth, something that can slow down the streaming.
Well, there are some notifications that are important but most of them are not. If you don’t want to be getting all these notifications, then you can turn on “Do Not Interrupt” and speed up Firestick in the process.
To do this, follow the following steps:
- Head to Settings on your Firestick TV.
- Scroll across and locate the Preferences tab and click it.
- Head to Notification Settings and click it.
- On the menu that appears, locate Do Not Interrupt and turn it on.
3. Choose the 5 GHz Connection on Your Wi-Fi
We all know that the strength and signal quality of your Wi-Fi connection also plays a key role in determining the performance of your Firestick TV.
After all, faster Internet often means faster streaming. But there’s actually a very big difference between Internet speed and signal quality.
While speed is good, you want your connection to have the best signal quality possible. For instance, you can have speeds of up to 100 Mbps but if your signal is poor, then you’ll experience lag, buffering, and an overall poor experience.
To connect to the best possible connection, follow the steps here.
- Head to the Settings tab on your Firestick TV
- Scroll across and find Network
- You will see a list of different Wi – Fi networks available including yours
- Typically, your network will appear twice. The first one is titled with the name while the other includes 5 GHz at the end
- Always connect to the one that has 5 GHz. It is faster and offers better quality, something that eventually will speed up Firestick and performance
Additionally, always assess the Wi-Fi network you are using for signal quality. As a rule of thumb, it’s always recommended that you only connect to a network that offers at least a good signal strength. Anything lower than that will cause you a lot of problems.
In some cases, a poor signal can be fixed by bringing the Wi-Fi router closer to your Firestick. You may also consider connecting via an Ethernet cable to your local area network.
LAN networks are typically faster and more reliable than Wi-Fi and may offer a better streaming experience.
4. Close Background Apps
Every time we’re streaming something on our Firestick TV, we typically hit the home button when we’re done watching. This takes us to the nice home screen and we can easily assume that there’s nothing going on. But we’d be so wrong.
Unless you physically close an app after using it, it will continue running in the background for a long time. In some cases, we open many apps and leave them running in the background to a point where our devices become very slow.
Well, it’s time to deal with this and here are a few steps to follow:
- Download an App called Background Apps and Process List. Locate the search button on your top right corner, and type in the words
- Click on the app to Download or Get
- Head to Download
- Give it a few minutes and when it’s done, launch it on ‘Open’
- Take a look at the app notes and hit ‘Got it!’
- When the app opens, it will give you the list of all apps running in the background
- You can either choose to close all of them or close one by one
- However, the more apps you close in the background, the more efficient your Firestick TV will be. Go to ‘Force stop’ for each app that appears on the list.
This app also gives you options to uninstall apps and even clear the cache data associated with each application.
5. Clean Up the Storage
It’s also possible for your Firestick to significantly slow down if you’re running out of internal storage.
The sad thing is that we don’t often have a lot of control over our storage. Since it’s limited, we have to rely on external drives or the cloud.
However, you can easily know how much space you have on your Firestick TV by following the steps below.
- Hit the home button on your remote and head to Settings
- Scroll across and open the “My Fire TV” section. In some devices, this area might read “My Device”
- On the menu that appears, click About
- You will now be able to see how much space you have used, and how much is still left
If indeed your internal storage is nearly full or getting closer to that, you may want to start clearing up some space.
Just look at all your files and delete anything you do not need. Don’t forget to uninstall all the apps that you don’t use. This will easily speed up Firestick.
6. Make Sure the Software Is Updated
It’s very important to make sure that your Firestick TV is running on the most up to date software possible. New updates can be bitter-sweet sometimes.
They may come with bugs that affect how your device works. But in most cases, updates are simply going to make your Firestick TV better.
To check for updates and speed up Firestick, follow the following step:
- Hit the home button on your remote and select Settings
- Go to “My Fire TV” and select about on the drop-down menu that appears
- Scroll down at the bottom of the screen and you will see “Check for Updates”
- Click it. The device will scan for new updates and if one is available, you’ll be prompted to install it
7. Upgrade Your Device
Not everything can be fixed. Sometimes you may need to replace your device to get it working faster. Amazon has released a good number of Firestick TV devices, most of which have done pretty well. But if you’re still using the first-generation Firestick, then it may be time for an upgrade.
Older versions are extremely slow and may not be compatible with some of the latest updates that Amazon has been putting out.
Even if you want to speed up Firestick, in this case here you will have a lot of trouble getting things done. It’s also very common for second-generation Firestick to have problems with performance. In essence, if you can get the latest Firestick TV, go for it. It will be worth the money.
8. Get the Right Internet Package
As we noted somewhere above, the Internet plays the biggest role in the performance of your Firestick TV.
You simply want a fast connection that’s reliable enough to give you an excellent signal all the time. You will notice that the Internet packages from your service provider offer a lot.
Basic packages won’t always give you the best speeds although they are cheaper. It’s, therefore, important to carefully assess what your internet needs are.
If you anticipate that you will be streaming high-definition videos all the time, then get a premium package with very good speeds. This will of course cost relatively more. But it will go a long way in giving you an excellent user experience.
Conclusion
Using a slow Firestick can be very annoying. You’re never quite sure what it can do and what it can’t. But it’s possible to optimize the performance of your Firestick TV by following a series of steps and tricks. We have highlighted some above but we know there are a lot more out there.
We would love to hear what you’re doing to speed up Firestick. Have you used any of our tricks above? Did they work? What else can we do? Let us know in the comments below.
