Unofficial LineageOS 18.1 brings Android TV 11 to the third-generation Amazon Fire TV Stick series

In terms of streaming encryption dogs, Amazon Fire TV Sticks is one of the most popular streaming devices on the market. Amazon maintains its own Android branch for these devices, called Fire OS, which lacks Google apps and has a completely different user interface from Google's Android TV operating system. If you own the third-generation Fire TV Stick or its Lite variant and are not satisfied with the out-of-the-box software experience, you can now replace the Amazon firmware with the source-built Android 11 ROM and enjoy the original Android TV experience.

It's worth noting that Amazon doesn't officially allow you to unlock the boot loader for any consumer Fire TV device. This is the opportunity for the XDA community to use its talents. In a recent article, k4y0z, a senior member of XDA, highlighted a vulnerability that you can use to unlock Fire TV Stick 3 (code "Sheldonp") and Fire TV Stick Lite (code-name "Sheldon"). Although this process does not require you to remove the target device, it requires older versions of Fire OS (< 7.2.7.3) and Linux as the host operating system. The developer also compiled a unified TWRP version for the device duet. You can install the boot loader as soon as you unlock it and gain root access.

Now that you have a working TWRP, the next step is, of course, to customize ROM. Rortiz2, a senior member of XDA, has been compiling unofficial LineageOS versions for various Fire HD tablets for some time, and now developers have released the first Android TV 11-based LineageOS 18.1 ROM for third-generation Fire TV Stick (Lite). Although SoC supports 64-bit, the Android operating system on these models runs in 32-bit mode. Therefore, you must select the ARM variant of the Google application package after refreshing the ROM.