If you’ve tried to sideload an app on your Fire TV recently and found that Downloader — or another sideloading app — mysteriously vanished from the “Install unknown apps” list, you’re not imagining things. As Elias Saba first reported at AFTVnews, Amazon has now confirmed the Fire TV sideloading bug is real, and a fix is already on its way.

What’s going wrong

The trouble traces back to a recent Fire TV Settings update. That update introduced a glitch that causes the “Install unknown apps” permissions screen — the menu where you grant an app permission to install other APKs — to show up incomplete or even completely empty on some devices. Since Downloader relies on being listed there to get sideloading permission, the app effectively stops working for anyone hit by the bug.

The frustrating part is that it hasn’t been hitting every Fire TV device, or hitting them all the same way. Some users have reported the issue while others on similar hardware haven’t seen it at all, which made it tricky at first to tell whether this was a widespread problem or just isolated device hiccups.

Amazon says it wasn’t intentional

That uncertainty is cleared up now. Amazon has officially acknowledged the bug, confirming that it was never supposed to happen. According to the company, a bug introduced in a recent Fire TV Settings update is what caused the “Install unknown apps” list to appear broken on some devices.

When’s the Fire TV sideloading fix coming?

The good news is that Amazon isn’t just aware of the issue — it’s already rolling out a correction. The company says the fix will arrive through another Fire TV Settings update, and it will install automatically on affected devices over the coming week. Because it’s tied to the Settings component rather than a full Fire OS update, most people likely won’t need to do anything at all; the patch should quietly land in the background.

What to do in the meantime

If you’re currently locked out of sideloading because of this bug, the most practical move is simply to wait it out. Since the fix is being pushed automatically, there’s no update to manually trigger and no workaround needed once it arrives. If your Fire TV hasn’t picked up the fix within the coming week, it may be worth checking for a system update manually or keeping an eye out for further word from Amazon.

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