Amazon is done with Android on Fire TV Sticks. The company has now confirmed that all future streaming sticks will run Vega OS – its own in-house operating system – abandoning Android after more than a decade.
The confirmation comes from Amazon’s own developer website, which now states plainly: “Starting with Fire TV Stick 4K Select, all future Fire TV Sticks will run on Vega.”
And indeed – the new Fire TV HD, released just this week – runs Vega OS.
What this means in practice: Vega OS doesn’t support sideloading (installing apps from outside Amazon’s official store) and currently offers a far more limited app selection than Android-based sticks.
That said, this doesn’t mean your current Fire TV Stick is going anywhere. The popular Android-based Fire TV Stick 4K Plus and Fire TV Stick 4K Max remain on sale and aren’t being discontinued.
But any new Fire TV Stick released from this point forward will run Vega OS, not Android.
What Is Vega OS?
For more than a decade, Amazon’s Fire TV devices ran Fire OS – Amazon’s own interface built on top of Android. If you’ve ever used a Fire TV Stick, you’ve used Fire OS. It’s the familiar tile-based homescreen, the Alexa voice button, the rows of content recommendations.
Vega OS looks almost identical to Fire OS on the surface – the same interface, the same layout, the same general feel. But underneath, it’s a completely different beast.
Rather than being built on Android, Vega is built directly on Linux. That matters, because it means apps built for Android – including every app ever made for the old Fire TV sticks – won’t simply run on Vega. Every single app needs to be rebuilt from scratch, specifically for the new platform.
Amazon has been quietly developing Vega for years, first testing it on Echo Show smart displays before bringing it to Fire TV.
The first Fire TV device to run it was the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which launched in October 2025.
And just two days ago, Amazon launched the new Fire TV Stick HD – also running Vega, which was a somewhat surprising fact.
So while – with 4K sticks – you can now choose between Fire OS and Vega – HD sticks will only come with Vega OS once stocks for the older HD model are depleted.
And now, thanks to Amazon’s developer site wording, we know this isn’t just two devices – it’s the plan for everything going forward.
What Amazon Said Before
When the Fire TV Stick 4K Select launched at Amazon’s devices event last year, the company went out of its way to reassure customers and developers that Android wasn’t going anywhere.
Amazon stated it had “always been a multi-OS company” and specifically said it “will continue to launch new devices on Fire OS.”
Since then, Amazon has indeed launched new Fire OS devices – but they’ve all been smart televisions. Not a single new Android-based streaming stick has appeared.
And now the developer site tells a different story entirely.
Industry newsletter Lowpass, which has a strong track record on Fire TV reporting – they were the first to report on Vega’s existence back in 2023 – also reported this week that multiple sources with knowledge of Amazon’s plans have confirmed all future Fire TV Sticks will run Vega.
However, Amazon’s developer site makes this much more official.
The Sideloading Question
The word you’ll see everywhere in discussions about Vega OS is “sideloading” – and if you’re not familiar with it, here’s a quick explanation.
Sideloading simply means installing apps from outside Amazon’s official App Store. On Android-based Fire TV sticks, this was relatively straightforward – enable a setting in the menu, download an app from a third-party source, and install it.
Many people used this for perfectly legitimate purposes: installing apps that weren’t available in the UK, using alternative media players and utilities, or accessing niche streaming services.
But sideloading also became the engine behind the “dodgy Firestick” phenomenon – modified Fire TV sticks loaded with illegal IPTV apps and sold at car boot sales, on Facebook Marketplace, and through social media.
IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television – it’s simply the technology that delivers TV over the internet, which is how Netflix and iPlayer work too. The illegal version involved apps that provided access to Premier League football, Sky Sports, and premium content without paying for them.
Sky and the Premier League spent much of 2025 very publicly pressuring Amazon to crack down.
Amazon responded on two fronts – launching Vega OS devices that structurally can’t run sideloaded apps, and actively blocking known illegal IPTV apps on existing Android-based sticks in partnership with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.
On Vega OS, sideloading simply isn’t possible. You can only install apps from Amazon’s official App Store – full stop (there’s a workaround for developers, but it’s complex and won’t serve the same purpose as before).
Sideloading Is The Buzzword – But It’s Not The Biggest Issue
Sideloading has become the headline grievance around Vega OS, and the reaction in enthusiast communities has been fierce.
But in practice, the vast majority of Fire TV Stick users have never sideloaded a single app. For anyone who uses their stick to watch Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Disney+, NOW, and similar services – which is most people – Vega OS makes no meaningful difference to their daily experience.
Look at Roku – while it’s not as popular in the UK, it’s still the leading streaming device and operating system in the US – and Roku blocked the ability to install “private” apps (Roku’s version of sideloading) years ago.
It’s also worth understanding Amazon’s commercial perspective here. Amazon doesn’t make much – if anything – on the hardware itself.
The real money comes from what you do with the Firestick: Prime Video rentals, 3rd party subscriptions (like Paramount+, HBO Max, etc.) purchased through the store, and the adverts and promoted content you see on the Fire TV homescreen.
A customer who buys a Fire TV Stick purely to run illegal IPTV apps isn’t subscribing to anything, isn’t buying anything, and isn’t clicking on anything.
To put it bluntly – Amazon doesn’t particularly want that customer. Cracking down on sideloading isn’t just about keeping Sky happy; it’s also about ensuring that the people buying Fire TV Sticks are actually worth selling them to.
The Apps Issue
The issue that will actually affect more people is the app selection. Amazon’s App Store currently shows around 3,000 apps available for Vega OS devices – compared to around 40,000 on Android-based Fire TV sticks.
That’s an improvement from the roughly 900 apps available when the Select launched six months ago, and yes, all the big names are there.
BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, Channel 5, Netflix, Disney+, NOW, Prime Video, YouTube, Paramount+ – the mainstream services you’d expect are all covered.
But part of what makes Fire TV useful isn’t just the big names – it’s the breadth. Obscure sports channels, niche international services, specialist apps, quirky free streaming channels – many of these simply aren’t available on Vega yet.
And there’s a real question about whether they ever will be, because smaller developers have less incentive to invest time rebuilding their apps for a platform with a relatively small user base.
There’s also a forward-looking concern worth thinking about: when a brand new streaming app launches, which platform does it prioritise? Right now, Fire OS has the vastly larger install base. New apps will almost certainly arrive on Fire OS first – and some may never make it to Vega at all, at least not quickly.
Amazon has a partial workaround for this: a cloud-streaming programme that runs some Android apps on Amazon’s own servers and streams them to Vega devices.
It’s technically clever, and it’s helped fill some of the gap. But Amazon only committed to offering this free to developers for “at least nine months” from the Select’s launch in October 2025 – which means that window is now approaching its end.
What happens if and when Amazon starts charging developers for the privilege? Smaller apps may simply disappear from Vega devices entirely.
The Long Game
Here’s the thing though – Amazon going all-in on Vega isn’t necessarily a dead end for the app ecosystem. It might just take time.
If every new Fire TV Stick from this point on runs Vega, the Vega user base will grow with every sale. App developers who currently have little incentive to rebuild their apps for a small pool of Vega users might think very differently when that number is in the tens of millions.
At some point, the economics flip – and it’s actually Fire OS that starts looking like the legacy platform not worth investing in.
That’s clearly Amazon’s bet. By committing fully to Vega now, they’re forcing the ecosystem to follow. It’s a similar approach to the one Roku took years ago with its own closed, proprietary OS – and Roku’s app library is perfectly comprehensive today.
In the meantime, the existing Android-based sticks aren’t going anywhere. The Fire TV Stick 4K Plus (£59.99) and Fire TV Stick 4K Max (£69.99) remain on sale, remain hugely popular, and will continue to receive support for the foreseeable future. Nobody is being forced onto Vega today.
But if you’re buying a NEW Fire TV Stick from this point forward, Vega is what you’re getting. The new Fire TV Stick HD – available to pre-order now at £39.99 – runs Vega. The 4K Select runs Vega. And whatever comes next will run Vega too.
We’ve reached out to Amazon for further comment and will update this article if we hear back.
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