Development Best Practices

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Pages at a Glance

Mouse Pointers: If your app supports pointer-based input, Amazon Fire TV supports the use of a USB or Bluetooth-connected mouse that enables users to interact with your app. By default the mouse pointer appears as... more »
Display and Layout: Implementing an Android app that renders well on a television (or that behaves properly on both a tablet and a television) requires some attention to user interface layout. more »
Media Players: Any media player that uses the Android's media playback and encryption APIs (such as the MediaCodec, MediaCrypto, and AudioTrack classes) will work on the Amazon Fire TV platform. This documentatio... more »
Identifying Fire TV Devices: Most Amazon Fire TV developers build apps for both Google Play and the Amazon Appstore, using the same Android-based code for both app markets and devices. Because Amazon devices don't use Google s... more »
Handling HDMI Events: When users connect or disconnect an HDMI cable, your app must handle these HDMI events following the guidelines here. Some events include HDMI connection and disconnection. more »
Android Menu and ActionBar widgets: This page describes how to modify the Android Menu and ActionBar widgets to work for your Fire TV app. The Amazon Fire TV platform supports the majority of the existing Android UI framework (androi... more »
DIAL Integration: Amazon Fire TV devices support the DIAL (Discovery-and-Launch) protocol through the Whisperplay service. DIAL is an open protocol that enables your Fire TV app to be discoverable and launchable fro... more »
Implementing Search: Implementing search in Amazon Fire TV requires you to understand some key differences with text search and voice search. Text search within an app refers to any specific text-search features you ha... more »
Notifications: Fire TV devices support standard Android notifications through the Android Notifications API. These notifications appear in a Notification Center. more »
Specifying Your App's Installation Location: The settings in your Android Manifest file determine where your app is installed on Fire devices. Two storage locations are possible: external storage (such as an SD card), and internal storage (us... more »
Resources for International Locales: Amazon Fire devices have a default locale with a region and language that you can query programmatically. You can increase the reach of your app and improve the experience for users in different lo... more »
Advertising ID: The Advertising ID is a user-resettable, unique identifier that can be used for advertising and user analytics. Users can reset the Advertising ID or opt out of tracking for interest-based ads alto... more »