How to install the Play Store on any Amazon Fire tablet

Amazon’s Fire tablets are some of the most affordable tablets you can buy. Their bargain bin prices admittedly come at the cost of them not being great for productivity, but if you want to read or watch something, especially from one of Amazon’s platforms, they work really well.

The shortcoming of Fire tablets is that even though they’re technically running Android at their core, they don’t have access to Google’s Play Store, instead relying on Amazon’s smaller and more junky Amazon Appstore. That gives you fewer apps to pick from if you want to do anything other than play Roblox or watch TV and movies on major streaming services.

Luckily, Amazon doesn’t put up too many road blocks to sideloading any app you want on a Fire tablet, and there are tools that make it possible to add the Play Store and all of its accompanying services without too much effort. Here’s how you can go about adding the Play Store to your own Fire tablet.

How to install the Play Store

An indie utility makes the process of sideloading apps simple

With the right permissions enabled, you can install all the software (technically, APKs) you need to actually run the Google Play Store manually, if you really want to. Pocket-lint’s sister site, Android Police, has a great guide that goes over the process and the specific versions of Google Account Manager, Google Services Framework and Google Play Services you need to make it happen. There is an even simpler and more automated way to do it, though.

With Fire Toolbox, you can add the Play Store, sideload apps, and even make more extreme changes, like disabling your Fire tablet’s lockscreen ads, all from the same app. The usual warnings apply: You accept a significant amount of risk by downloading random software from a website that doesn’t apply if it was coming from an app store. Making changes to your Fire tablet outside more traditional developer-y tweaks like sideloading apps also likely breaks user agreements that you signed by owning and using one of Amazon’s tablets. If you’re willing to accept those risks, using Fire Toolbox is relatively user-friendly.

The first thing you need to do is unlock developer options on your Fire tablet so that you can enable USB debugging, the feature that’s going to let your computer do things to your tablet via a USB connection. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the Settings app on your Fire tablet.
2. Swipe to “Device Options” and tap on it.
3. Tap on the “About [Your Fire Tablet model]” menu.
4. Then, tap on your tablet’s serial number seven times until you see text saying that you’re a developer (Amazon gives you ample warning that this is going to happen).
5. Return to the previous screen by tapping on the back button and then tap on “Developer Options.”
6. In that menu, toggle “USB Debugging” on.

Your Fire tablet should now be able to connect to your computer. Your next step is to download Fire Toolbox. It’s available to download directly from the XDA Forums, but only runs on Windows and Linux, so if you don’t have a way to run it, you should consider Android Police’s method. You should also make sure that the version of Fire Toolbox you are downloading is the most recent version (at the time of writing, that’s V39.0). Once you have downloaded it:

1. Extract Fire Toolbox.
2. Click on the app to open it and decide if you want to let it make a shortcut.
3. Click to skip the guided tour of the app.
4. Connect your Fire tablet over USB.
5. On your Fire tablet, accept the onscreen warning so that your Fire tablet trusts your PC.
6. In Fire Toolbox, click on Google Services to install what you need to run the Play Store.
7. Click on Execute Task to start installing the APKs.
8. When prompted, allow Fire Toolbox to restart your Fire tablet.

Once all of that is taken care of, you should be safe to disconnect your tablet, load the Play Store, and log in to your Google account.

Even with Play Store, your Fire tablet can’t do everything

Fire OS is a fork of Android, not the real deal

As you start downloading things from the Play Store, you might find that there are some apps that don’t work on your Fire tablet. The unfortunate reality is that there are still parts of Android you need to run absolutely everything that you don’t get on Amazon’s Fire OS.

Fire Toolbox has some free and open-source alternatives that you can try if you want to replace missing apps, or you can see if sideloading an app makes them work when the Play Store doesn’t. For the rest, you just have to accept that you can’t get everything running on a Fire tablet.

A cheap Android tablet is better with more apps

You deserve more out of your Fire tablet

Amazon never intended Fire tablets to be powerful. They’re for kids and grandparents, not anyone who thinks they’re going to replace their laptop. If you’ve used one, you know that they’re consumption devices first and foremost — whether they have a keyboard case or not.

Amazon Fire HD 10 (2023)

Amazon’s Fire HD 10 tablet has a 10.1-inch, 1080p display, an octa-core processor, and support for stylus input and a keyboard accessory.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t also severely limited by being stuck with the Amazon Appstore rather than something as big and diverse as the Play Store. You’re a lot better off with Google’s app store than not. Amazon’s 10.1-inch Fire HD 10 tablet makes for a great option if you’re looking to get into Amazon’s ecosystem or, if you already have a Fire tablet, and you’re wondering if you should upgrade, it might be best to use it for a new purpose rather than spend more money.