Now you see ’em, now you still do. No matter how much you want to clean up and customize your Fire TV’s home screen, Amazon quietly rolled out an update that takes away the option to remove apps you don’t want to see.
Not surprisingly, the apps you can’t see (and, if you’re like me, desperately want not to see) are Amazon’s own Fire TV apps that come pre-installed on Fire TV devices, such as Prime Video, Amazon Live Shopping, Amazon News, Amazon Photos, and Fire TV Channels—a mix of live and on-demand programming from the usual cable channels, such as ABC News, Fox Sports, and the like.
The “Hide from Your Apps” selection that used to appear has itself been hidden and is no longer visible on the home screen since the most recent Fire TV update. So are we doomed to forever scroll past these apps like loser party crashers who won’t leave your living room?
more clutter, less customization
It was AFTVNews, an outlet devoted to covering Amazon Fire TV, that noticed the omission. Aside from not being able to hide apps that come pre-installed on Fire TV devices, one user profile won’t be able to hide any apps if another profile has them, pre-installed or not.
Say you’ve got two profiles on your Fire TV. One person likes watching Hulu, because Hulu is kind of a sleeper hit when it comes to movies, and so they add the Hulu app. The second person hates Hulu because, I don’t know, they suffer from prasinophobia, an intense fear of the color green.
Person number two, in rosier past days, could’ve hidden Hulu on their profile to keep their screen tidy with only the apps they like to watch. With the latest update, they can’t. Because profile number one has it, every other profile on that Fire TV device has to see it in their app lineup, too.
I can understand, although not condone, why Amazon would force people to keep its own channels on their home screens. They want people to watch them, and Amazon has been among the pushiest when it comes to, say, making people deal with ads on their Alexa devices.
But forcing every profile to see every app that every other profile has downloaded? It’s a sucky way to take away a feature they added four years ago. It just clutters up everyone’s user interfaces, and TV remotes on streaming devices are already cumbersome enough compared to smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers.
Stay tuned for our in-depth reviews on Fire TV devices, which will include enduring navigating the updated, no-hideaway user interfaces. Unlike Amazon, we won’t force you to look at them. Although why would anybody not want to? Crazy talk.
The post Amazon Fire TV Nixed Your Ability to Fire Unwanted Apps appeared first on VICE.
