After nearly two months of waiting, VPN apps have finally started appearing on Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Select – though you’d be forgiven for missing the news, as neither Amazon nor the VPN providers have actually announced it (so far).
NordVPN and IPVanish are now both available to download on the Select, working exactly as they do on Amazon’s other Fire TV devices.
The apps quietly became available over the past couple of days, arriving with the latest software update to Vega OS.
For anyone who’s been holding off on buying a Select because of the missing VPN support, this changes the equation – especially with the device still sitting at £19.99 in Amazon’s Black Friday sale.
But several issues still remain with Amazon’s latest Firestick.
A Quick Recap: What’s Been Going On?
The Fire TV Stick 4K Select (see my in-depth review) launched in mid-October at £49.99 as Amazon’s most affordable 4K streaming device. But it came with several caveats, one of which was no VPN support at launch.
The Select is the first Fire TV device to run Vega OS, Amazon’s brand new operating system built directly on Linux rather than Android. Because it’s a completely different platform, every app needs to be rebuilt from scratch to work on it.
Back in early October, when we first reported on the Select’s lack of VPN support, NordVPN told us Amazon planned to enable VPN protocols “via a software update in late October.”
That timeline slipped. By early November, IPVanish confirmed their app was also ready and waiting, but VPN support still hadn’t arrived. The apps were finished – they were just sitting on Amazon’s servers, waiting for the company to flip the switch.
Nearly two months after launch, that’s finally happened.
Which VPN Apps Are Available?
For now, it’s just NordVPN and IPVanish – the two providers who publicly confirmed their apps were ready weeks ago.
We reached out to ExpressVPN and Windscribe to ask about their plans…