Just when we thought that Instagram was going to take all the social media cake, TikTok came into play and conquered people of all ages. The platform has swept mobile devices in record time, showing that the world of communication and entertainment could still be given one more twist. Now TikTok has also made the leap to smart TVs. In this article we will explain step by step how to install its application on your television if you have an Amazon Fire TV .
The app exists in the store but you will not see it (for now)
Surely you have ever wanted to show a TikTok video at home and your mobile phone has outgrown it. To put it on the TV, one option is to use the screen mirroring function, which allows you to project the screen of your Android on the TV. However, if you have a Fire TV Stick, you don’t need that feature, as TikTok has its own native app for this Amazon smart device, as well as for Samsung Tizen-powered TVs and other Google-powered Smart TVs.
The TikTok app for Fire TV devices hit the Amazon AppStore in 2021. However, the app was only released for the US, Canada, UK, France, and Germany. If you don’t live in one of those countries, when you search for the app within the store, it won’t appear. Therefore, it will be time to skip the limits. Do not worry, because the process is really simple.
How to install TikTok on Amazon Fire TV?
Even if the native TikTok app is not in the Amazon AppStore in your country, you can always install it by doing a little trick . To do this, what we will do is download the app independently and install it manually on our device. In this way, we will skip the geographical blocking and we will be able to use the application without any problems. However, the first thing you should do before starting this tutorial is to verify that the native TikTok app is not in your store. If it is, install it and period. If it doesn’t appear, follow these steps:
Prepare the Fire TV Stick for third-party apps
The first thing will be to enable the option to install apps from unknown sources on our device. The process you must follow is as follows:
- Go to the main menu of your Fire TV Stick. Press up with your controller and enter the Settings option.
- Go to the section called ‘ My Fire TV ‘. Within this section is where you will be able to touch the configuration of your streaming device.
- Click on the ‘ Developer Options ‘ option.
- Next, activate the two options that appear inside: ‘ Debugging ADB ‘ and ‘ Apps of unknown origin’ .
These two functions are “hidden” in this menu because they can put your computer at risk if they are used incorrectly, but you should not worry if you are only going to install the TikTok app. Once these steps are done, you will now be able to manually install Android applications in APK format.
Download and install the app on the Amazon device
Done the previous step, now you need an application to download files in APK format from the Internet . We will do it with a native app from the Amazon AppStore, called Downloader . However, you can use your web browser and search for the TikTok app within a trusted repository like APK Mirror .
If all this sounds Chinese to you, don’t worry and follow these steps :
- Go to the app store on your Fire TV Stick and search for the ‘Downloader’ app .
- Hit ‘ get ‘ and wait for the app to download and install on your device.
- Open the ‘Downloader’ app that you just downloaded. It will be in the app box on your Amazon Fire TV Stick.
- Go to the app’s sidebar and go inside the ‘ Browser ‘ option.
- Now you will have a normal web browser. You should use it to find a trusted online repository to download the app.
- There are several websites of this type that are trustworthy. We are going to recommend the APK Mirror website, which is one of the oldest and safest repositories that exist. To enter, enter the URL address of this website in the Downloader browser bar, which is, without quotes, ‘ apkmirror.com ‘.
- Once inside, locate the APK Mirror search tool and search for ‘TikTok TV ‘. It is important that you write ‘TV’, since it is necessary to install the version designed for Smart TV devices, and not the normal one for mobile phones.
- Download the latest APK you find.
- Once downloaded, a pop-up window will automatically appear. We click on ‘ Install ‘.
- Hit ‘ OK ‘ and follow the process until the app is installed on your device.
- Voila, you now have TikTok TV on your Amazon Fire TV Stick device . You should see the social network icon in the app box.
Keep the TikTok app on the stick up to date
From time to time, you should download a new version of the TikTok app for Fire TV using the Downloader . In this way, you will be able to enjoy the features that are released over time. However, this can be a somewhat tedious process, so we will show you an automatic way to do it.
Install Apptoide on Fire TV
Another very interesting and also reliable option to download third-party apps on your Fire TV Stick is to install Apptoide TV .
If you haven’t started the tutorial steps, you can start right here. If you already installed it, don’t worry as these steps will also work for you. The first thing you should do is go back to the Downloader app (following the steps above) and where you would have to do step 6, we would place the URL ‘ tv.apptoide.com ‘. Once that process is done, proceed to install the Apptoide APK on your Fire TV Stick.
Now you will have an alternative application store on your device , where you will not only be able to search to install the TikTok app, but you will also be able to keep it updated at all times.
If you have already installed the TikTok APK from APK Mirror, this extra step will help you keep the app up to date in the future.