One of the Amazon Fire TV Stick's most significant issues is how full of ads it is.
Seriously, they're everywhere and pretty much inescapable. I've tried turning off simple settings like disabling autoplay ads, but this doesn't really solve the issue. After doing a bit of research, there seems to be two clear options if you're looking to get rid of intrusive ads from your Fire TV Stick.
You can install an ad blocker of some sort โ which reportedly doesn't work that well and only removes some ads โ or ditch Amazon's crowded Fire OS home screen entirely for a far cleaner-looking third-party launcher like Wolf Launcher. I went with the latter option, and while the installation is a bit more involved than I initially expected, custom launchers allowed me to completely get rid of ads from my Fire TV Stick 4K Max.
This method should be compatible with all modern Amazon Fire TV Sticks, including the Ultra, Plus, and HD. It won't work with the Fire TV Select given it runs Vega OS and not Fire OS. I'm unable to get my Fire TV Stick 4K Max to boot directly to Wolf Launcher because I'm running the latest version of Amazon's official Fire TV Stick firmware. If you haven't updated your firmware and auto-updates are turned off, you might be able to make it work with apps like Launcher Manager.
…