It has been apparent that Amazon has been working on a version of their Silk web browser for their line of Fire TV devices ever since it was discovered that their tablet Silk browser contained a tutorial for the Fire TV voice remote. A new leak from Amazon has all but confirmed that the Silk browser is coming to the Fire TV. For a short time last night, if you performed a voice search on the Fire TV, you were presented with a new option to pass that search query to the Silk browser, which has not yet been released.

When you perform a voice search on the Fire TV, you have the option to search within apps, instead of using the Fire TV’s universal search. There are currently only two apps that support this feature, the Amazon Music app and the YouTube app. For a brief time, a third option for the Silk browser was also listed as an acceptable app to search within.

While it was briefly available, selecting the Silk browser search option unfortunately just displayed a blank screen, since the browser app itself has not yet been added to Fire TVs. Even if you used my guide to sideload the old Silk browser from Amazon’s tablets onto the Fire TV, which does function with the Fire TV remote, it still did not accept voice searches. The latest version of the Silk browser, pulled from a Fire tablet, no longer launches on the Fire TV.

The Silk browser icon displayed on the Fire TV contained a “BETA” banner. This is likely because Amazon usually tests upcoming features internally with employees, before releasing them to the public. Those internal tests usually carry a Beta designation.

When the Silk browser does eventually get released to the public, it seems you’ll be able to use the voice remote to perform internet searches through the browse, using the Fire TV’s universal search feature. This isn’t as good as being able to directly use the voice remote within the Silk browser itself, but until Amazon allows apps to use the remote’s microphone, passing queries to apps through the universal search is the only option.

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