

I was able to get an early sneak peek at a handy new app coming to the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick called App Shortcut Remote. It allows you to remotely launch apps on your Fire TV device using an Android or iOS smartphone. The app is elegant in its simplicity and works perfectly. You simply enter your Fire TV’s IP address in the client app on your mobile device and a list of apps installed on your Fire TV appear.

The Fire TV app, which must first be installed on your Fire TV for the client apps to work, will be $2.99 when it’s released. The app is currently going through Amazon’s approval process and should be available any day now. The client apps for Android and iOS devices will be free and released once the Fire TV app gets approved. The iOS app will work on iOS 7.0 and up, while the Android app will support version 4.1 and up.

Currently, the client app simply displays a list of all the apps installed on your Fire TV. Tapping any app in the list will instantly launch the app on your Fire TV. There’s no need to go to the Fire TV’s home screen first. This is by far the fastest way to quickly switch between apps on the Fire TV. Your Fire TV does NOT need to be rooted to use this app. The developer tells me that he’s already working on a future version of the app which will allow you to manually reorder the app list so that you can put your most frequently used apps at the top. He also plans to add a feature which lets you choose an app to be launched on your phone after a Fire TV app is launched. This would allow you to automatically launch, for example, the Kodi remote app on your phone when selecting to launch Kodi on the Fire TV.

I’ll be sure to write up a post once this handy new app becomes available to everyone.

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