Identify Fire TV Devices

Most Amazon Fire TV developers build apps concurrently for the Amazon Appstore and other online marketplaces.

For Fire TV devices running Fire OS, developers will also build apps for Google Play using the same Android-based code for both app markets and devices. Because Amazon devices don't use Google services (they use Amazon services and APIs instead), you must target your code in different ways. Additionally, within Fire OS, there are several versions:

• Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 14: Based on Android 14 (API level 34), Android 13 (API level 33), Android 12L (API level 32), and Android 12 (API level 31)
• Fire OS 8: Based on Android 11 (API level 30), and Android 10 (API Level 29)
• Fire OS 7: Based on Android 9 (Pie, API level 28)
• Fire OS 6: Based on Android 7.1 (Nougat, API level 25)
• Fire OS 5: Based on Android 5.1 (Lollipop, API level 22)

This documentation provides details on identifying Amazon devices based on features, models, and API levels. You can find details about which Fire TV device has which OS version in the Fire TV Device Specifications.

• Reasons for Checking the Amazon Fire TV Device
• Identify Amazon Devices by Feature and Model
• Check for the API Level
• Check Whether 4K Is Supported
• adb Commands to Check for Properties or Features

Reasons for Checking the Amazon Fire TV Device

For Fire TV devices running Fire OS, you should verify the Amazon Fire TV device in your code for a number of reasons:

• You have Android 10 (API level 29) or Android 11 (API level 30) features that are supported only on Fire OS 8 devices.
• You have Pie-specific (API level 27 and up) features that are supported only on Fire OS 7 devices.
• You have Nougat-specific (API level 25 and up) features that are supported only on Fire OS 6 devices.
• You want to determine whether the app must tear down the DRM and HW decoding pipeline in their onPause() method. Deconstructing the decoding pipeline is required for Fire TV 1st Gen due to limited handling of multiple DRM contexts.

Identify Amazon Devices by Feature and Model

You can identify Amazon Fire TV devices by looking for amazon.hardware.fire_tv as a feature. For Fire TV devices running Fire OS, you can also use patterns in the android.os.Build.MODEL. For information about each device's build model, see the Fire TV Device Specifications.

You can identify all Fire TV devices through the feature amazon.hardware.fire_tv. You get the feature by calling the getPackageManager() method on the Context object and checking whether hasSystemFeature() returns com.hardware.amazon.fire_tv. The following code shows a sample:

final String AMAZON_FEATURE_FIRE_TV = "amazon.hardware.fire_tv";

if (getPackageManager().hasSystemFeature(AMAZON_FEATURE_FIRE_TV)) {
 Log.v(TAG, "Yes, this is a Fire TV device.");
} else {
 Log.v(TAG, "No, this is not a Fire TV device.");
}

For Fire TV devices running Fire OS, you can also identify them by checking android.os.Build.MODEL. However, as more Amazon-powered devices come to market with non-Amazon manufacturers, using android.os.Build.MODEL might not always work.

final String AMAZON_FEATURE_FIRE_TV = "amazon.hardware.fire_tv";
String AMAZON_MODEL = Build.MODEL;

if (AMAZON_MODEL.matches("AFTN")) {
 Log.v(TAG, "Yes, this is a Fire TV 3rd Gen device");
} else if (getPackageManager().hasSystemFeature(AMAZON_FEATURE_FIRE_TV)) {
 Log.v(TAG, "Yes, this is a Fire TV device.");
} else {
 Log.v(TAG, "No, this is not a Fire TV device");
}

Check for the API Level

For Fire TV devices running Fire OS, you can implement conditional behavior based on the Android API level. Check for the API level of the device using SDK_INT. For example, the following code checks whether the version is greater than or equal to API level 25:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 25) {
 Log.v(TAG, "Yes, this is an API level 25 or higher device");
} else {
 Log.v(TAG, "No, this is not an API level 25 or higher device");
}

In this case, the code would target Fire OS 6 and higher (API level 25+) and exclude any Fire OS 5 devices (API level 22). If you want to target only Fire OS 5 devices, you would use a similar logic:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT <= 22) {
 Log.v(TAG, "Yes, this is an API level 22 or lower device");
} else {
 Log.v(TAG, "No, this is not an API level 22 or lower device");
}

Check Whether 4K Is Supported

For Fire TV devices running Fire OS, you can check whether 4K is supported by using the standard Android Display.Mode APIs. These APIs were introduced in Android 6.0. Display.Mode helps apps to query physical display sizes and switch to a different HDMI display mode.

For Fire OS 5 devices (which are based on Android 5.1, before the release of Display.Mode), Display.Mode is also available (due to some backporting of these APIs into Fire OS) but you must use reflection. Amazon provides a 4K Extension Library that wraps these Android APIs using reflection and provides a simple interface for them. See APIs for HDMI Mode Switch for more details.

adb Commands to Check for Properties or Features

If you want to see which properties or features a device has using adb, you can do the following:

1. Connect to ADB.
2. To see the device's properties, run adb shell getprop.
3. To see the device's features, run adb shell pm list features.

Last updated: Sep 30, 2025