Any device that has a screen as a playback medium is valid to take a screenshot. And Amazon Fire TVs do not escape screenshots: you can take screenshots of your player and have them on your mobile instantly. It is a good idea to have this method on hand.
Fire TVs are HDMI players that allow you to turn any television into a Smart TV, very similar to Chromecast with Google TV. In fact, Amazon devices are also Android; even though FireOS, the Fire TV operating system, is an independent adaptation (fork) that differs in some aspects from Android itself. Among the similarities is the possibility of taking screenshots, although it is not as simple as in Chromecasts.
Capture the screen from your mobile and save the image to the gallery
No more fighting with a file manager on the Fire TV or with button combinations on the remote control: the method we propose enables remote screenshots using an Android smartphone. And not just images, you can also save video captures. Always with a limitation: if the content you play on TV is protected, such as a Netflix movie, the screenshots will appear black. This is common on any Android device, whether mobile, tablet or TV.
To take screenshots remotely we will use an excellent application from Google Play: Easy Fire Tools. It is a free app and a complete Swiss army knife for Fire TV: we fully recommend it. It allows you to manage files, install APKs remotely and what we are looking for, captures.
Easy Fire Tools
Install your favorite apps on Amazon FireTv or other Android devices
Once the Easy Fire Tools app is installed on your Android, let’s see how to configure it to connect to the Amazon player.
- You must have the Fire TV and your mobile connected to the same WiFi network.
- Go into your Fire TV settings and scroll down to “My Fire TV.”
- Press “About” several times until “Developer Options” are activated.
- Go to the developers menu and activate “USB Debugging”.
- Go back, go back to “About”, go to the “Network” menu and look at the IP address of your Amazon Fire TV. Write it down.
- Open Easy Fire Tools on your mobile, click on the three top lines and enter “Settings”.
- Click on “IP Address” and write the IP address of your Amazon Fire TV.
- Go back to the main menu of the application and click on the top connect icon: you will see an ADB request appear on the TV screen. Accept it.
- If everything has gone well, your mobile phone is now connected to the TV player using the Android ADB protocol. Display the Easy Fire Tools menu and enter “Task Manager”.
- You will see some small icons at the bottom: the camera icon is the one in the screenshot. Press, accept and you will have the captured image of the Fire TV in your mobile gallery. And the same with the video camera, although with screen recording.
The playback of content in apps such as Netflix, Prime Video and similar is protected: if you try to capture the screen you will only have a black image (or video)
Every time you want to capture the screen of your Fire TV you will have to open the application on your mobile, connect it to the TV and go to “Task Manager”: click on the capture icon and you will automatically have it on your mobile. The method is valid for any Amazon Fire TV.
Cover image | Ivan Linares