Hack your Amazon Fire tablet with Fire Toolbox (Install Google Play, remove Amazon apps, and more)

Amazon’s Fire tablets offer a lot of bang for the buck. With list prices starting as low as $50, they’re cheaper than any iPad, and more affordable than most Samsung tablets. They often go on sale for even lower prices – ahead of Black Friday, Amazon is selling Fire tablets with prices starting as low as $35 for a 7 inch tablet, $45 for an 8 inch model, or $75 for a Fire HD 10.

But despite their low prices, Fire tablets tend to have decent displays, good battery life, and acceptable performance (considering the low price tag). They’re also somewhat hackable – if you don’t like the limitations that Amazon puts on the tablets, you can use install the Google Play Store by downloading and installing a few apps. Or you can use a third-party utility like Fire Toolbox to modify the look and behavior of Amazon’s tablets.

While Amazon’s Android-based Fire OS is probably fine if all you need is a simple device for web surfing, watching videos, and maybe playing some light games.

But Fire OS doesn’t ship with the Google Play Store and Amazon doesn’t make it easy to change your keyboard, lock screen wallpaper, or many other settings. That’s where the unofficial Fire Toolbox app comes in.

Developed by xda-developers forum member Datastream33, Fire Toolbox is a Windows application that makes it easy to hack a Fire tablet by doing things like installing the Google Play Store, replacing the default Fire OS home screen and launcher, sideloading apps, removing pre-installed apps, and making other changes to Amazon’s tablets.

While you cannot install custom ROMs on most recent Fire tablets, Fire Toolbox provides you with a way to make Fire OS feel more like stock Android.

Folks have been finding ways to modify Fire tablets for years, typically with command line tools. Fire Toolbox combines many of those tools into one application and makes the process a little more user friendly thanks to a graphical user interface with a series of menus that you can explore.

Among other things, Fire Toolbox lets you:

• Install the Google Play Store and Google services.
• Change the default launcher app (you can use something like Nova launcher to make Fire OS look more like stock Android). Update: Recent builds of Fire OS won’t allow you to fully replace he default launcher, but you can hijack the home button so that pressing it will open a third-party launcher app.
• Change your screen density options (to make text and graphics look larger or smaller).
• Disable some or all of Amazon’s pre-installed apps (I suggest using the manual option and just checking the apps you know you don’t want or need).
• Enable or disable automatic updates, over-the-air updates, or change other system settings.
• Sideload apps (install applications downloaded to your PC from trusted sites like APK Mirror if they aren’t available in the Amazon Appstore and/or you don’t want to install Google Play).
• Backup all data on your tablet to your PC, or restore from a previous backup.
• Move files to and from your tablet.
• Record a video or save a screenshot.

Fire Toolbox v27 is the most recent version of the utility as of early April, 2022 and it includes new and updated features that brings bug fixes, support for installing any third-party launcher app, improvements to the driver setup experience, and support for running sideloaded apps immediately after installing them.

Other changes implemented recently include support for disabling the lock screen, support for disabling Amazon’s “Device Dashboard” icon for folks that aren’t using Amazon’s smart home features,” and improvements to the Fire Toolbox automatic updater.

It’s also a little easier to sideload Android applications from your PC (which you can download from sources other than the Amazon Appstore or Google Play), replace Amazon’s Alexa voice service with Google Assistant, and perform other tweaks to customize the software on your Amazon Fire tablet.

There’s also a tool that lets you remove lock screen ads from some Fire tablets – but when doing so, you’ll see a warning message that makes it clear that the official way to do that is to pay Amazon $15, but maybe you bought a used tablet on eBay and didn’t even know that there were “special offers” on the lock screen? Fire Toolbox provides a way to disable them for free.

Note that the Fire Toolbox will also frequently recommend you block automatic updates from Amazon in order to ensure that hacks you make using the tool aren’t overwritten by future Fire OS updates. Just keep in mind that if you go down that road you may also be blocking potential security updates, so proceed with caution.

That said, some of Amazon’s updates may remove functionality of the Toolbox. For example, in November, 2021 some users discovered that after installing Fire OS 7.3.2.2, the app would no longer let users:

• Set a third-party launcher app as the default launcher
• Block OTA updates
• Remove lock screen ads
• Disable some of Amazon’s system apps

Fortunately, Fire Toolbox developer DataStream 33 found a semi-functional workaround for the launcher app situation about a month later. While you still cannot uninstall the default Amazon home screen and app launcher on tablets running Fire OS 7.3.2.2 or later, you can install a third-party launcher and effectively hijack the home button so that whenever you press it, you’ll be taken to the launcher app of your choice rather than Amazon’s. So that’s how the Custom Launcher feature works in Fire Toolbox v26 and later, effectively making Amazon’s tablets feel a little more like they’re running stock Android software rather than Fire OS.

Unfortunately this method won’t survive a reboot, so if you ever have to reboot your tablet running Fire OS 7.3.2.2 or later after changing the default launcher app, you’ll likely see the default Amazon Fire Tablet launcher/user interface at startup and you’ll need to run the Fire Toolbox software again to set your preferred launcher.

Folks running Fire OS 7.3.2.2 or later also won’t be able to block over-the-air updates, so if you do find yourself with a Fire tablet running an earlier version of Fire OS and you want to keep it as hackable as possible, you may want to try disabling OTA updates.

OK, so let’s get down to hacking our tablets.

In order to use Fire Toolbox on a recent Amazon tablet, you need to:

1. Download and install the latest version of Fire Toolbox on a Windows PC.
2. Enable USB debugging on your Fire tablet by following these steps:
   1. Open the Settings app on your Fire tablet.
   2. Scroll down until you find Device Options and tap it.
   3. Tap the serial number 7 times until a message pops up saying that you’re now a developer.
   4. Tap the back button to return to the previous screen.
   5. Tap the new item that says “Developer Options.”
   6. Slide the toggle to enable Developer Options.
   7. Scroll down until you find “USB Debugging” and slide the toggle so that it’s enabled.
   8. Plug your tablet into the Windows PC using a USB cable.
   9. Run the Fire Toolbox app on your PC.
   10. A box should appear on the tablet. Click OK.”

You can find the latest version of Fire Toolbox at the xda-developers forum.

In the market for a cheap tablet, and need help figuring out which Amazon Fire tablet may be right for your needs? We’ve got your covered with our spec comparison table for Amazon’s current-gen tablets:

This article was originally published Nov 30, 2020 and last updated April 5, 2022.

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