What to Do When Your Amazon Fire TV Stick Keeps Buffering/Stopping

If you’re looking for a way to add smart TV functionality to an older flat screen—either one without any streaming services or one that has aged out of app updates for its platform—Amazon’s Fire TV line of devices is a fantastic addition. From Netflix and Hulu to HBO Max and Amazon’s Prime service, there’s no shortage of media you can watch on your Fire TV, and since the device starts at just $29 for the Amazon Fire Stick Lite, it’s an affordable and easy to use option for anyone to set up.

Of course, like any gadget, your Fire Stick can and will run into bugs and issues. One of the most common problems users encounter is buffering issues, stopping their streams in the middle of the latest Stranger Things or Big Mouth season.

While this can be annoying, fortunately, it’s rarely a sign of any serious issue with your device. Instead, it typically comes down to problems with your internet connection not being fast enough to handle streaming over your network. Let’s take a look at how to diagnose and solve this issue.

Firestick Buffering Problems: Check Your Internet Speed

The first thing to check is the Internet connection speed that your Fire Stick receives. Streaming video is fairly bandwidth-intensive, and if your Internet connection isn’t up to par, then your Fire Stick may not be able to keep up with those Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes you’re blasting out. The main reason your Fire Stick might buffer is that it doesn’t have enough of the video stream loaded to keep playing, and it has to catch up.

Select your preferred browser in the Fire TV home menu and go to the search bar. If you haven’t installed a browser yet, you can follow these steps to access the Silk browser.

1. Install the Silk browser on your Firestick. If you already have a browser (any you want), skip to “Step X.
2. To install the Silk browser, wake your television and your Fire Stick using the power button on the Fire TV remote.
   
3. On the “Home” screen, select the “Apps” tab.
4. Select “Categories,” then choose “Utility.”
5. Choose the “Silk Browser” app.
6. Select the “Get” button.
7. The Silk browser will install on your Fire TV Stick.
8. Launch the Silk browser, or one of your choices on your Firestick.
9. In the URL box, type www.fast.com. The website (owned by Netflix) tests your internet speed automatically when loaded.
   
10. View your downstream internet speed from the generated results.
    
11. Confirm your speed needs to meet the following: standard-definition video (while not doing anything else) is 3 to 4 Mbps. High-definition video requires 6 to 10 Mbps. 4K video streams need around 25 Mbps.
12. If your Fire Stick doesn’t get more than the minimum speed you need (bandwidth), it’s not going to give you a good video streaming experience.

It’s important to remember that you need to test the Internet speed from your Fire Stick, not at the router or elsewhere in your network. It doesn’t matter if your ISP provides you 100 Mbps at the router if your wireless connection to the Fire Stick only passes through 3 Mbps of that. Test at the TV set, not anywhere else.

Firestick Buffering Problems: Disable Collecting Application Data

Another possible source of slowdowns is that your Fire Stick collects data from all applications installed on the device. This activity is one of the things slowing it down. You can easily disable the option in Settings. Here’s how to disable the collection of app data.

1. Select “Settings” in your Fire Stick menu.
2. Choose “Applications.”
3. Select “Collect App Usage Data.”
   
4. Turn off “Collect App Usage.”

Firestick Buffering Problems: Tweak Your Preferences

You can make some adjustments to your Fire Stick that optimize its overall performance, which may help resolve buffering and freezing problems.

1. Select “Settings” in your Fire TV menu.
2. Choose “Preferences.”
3. Select “Data Monitoring” and turn it off, then exit the “Data Monitoring” menu.

   

4. Select “Notification Settings.”
5. Choose “App Notifications,” then turn off all notifications that you don’t actually need. Exit “Notification Settings.”
6. Select “Featured Content,” then turn off “Allow Video Autoplay” and “Allow Audio Autoplay.”

Firestick Buffering Problems: Uninstall Unnecessary Applications

It’s tempting to install many cool applications that you see on your Fire Stick, but it’s important to remember that the device is like a computer. If you load it down with a lot of junk, it’s going to start running slowly and develop problems. If you have performance issues, uninstall all of the apps that you’re not using.

1. Select “Settings” in your Fire Stick menu.
2. Choose “Applications.”
3. Select “Manage Installed Applications.”
4. Choose an application and select the “Uninstall” option to remove the app.
5. Repeat this process for all the applications that you don’t actually use.

Remember that your Fire Stick includes several pre-installed apps, so even if you’re new to using Fire TV, you might need to look for pre-installed apps you don’t use.

Firestick Buffering Problems: Free Up Your Fire TV Stick RAM

If you run many processes on your Fire Stick, you likely run out of RAM fairly quickly. Exhausting the RAM causes the device to stop or stay in an infinite buffer loop. You can quickly free up the RAM via a third-party app.

1. Download the Phone Cleaner app.
2. Launch the app and select the “Memory Booster” cleaning option.
3. You can also use the “Junk Cleaner” option to help speed things up, but there is no guarantee it will help, although it does free up more space for cache and removes old, unused data.

Firestick Buffering Problems: Use a VPN Service

As I explained above, fast internet is crucial for a Fire Stick to operate smoothly. However, sometimes your Internet provider may be throttling your speed because it recognizes that you’re streaming video. Throttling is the deliberate slowing down of your internet speed to minimize congestion. Luckily, you can easily work around throttling. Using a VPN service allows you to connect to a different server and avoid congestion and throttling altogether.

Resolving Firestick Buffering Problems

There are many reasons why your Firestick could be experiencing buffering problems, so start with the simple solutions. Given that they never actually turn off unless unplugged, it can be good to occasionally turn off your Firestick for a few minutes to allow it cool or perform a restart on it. From there, check your Wi-Fi network for issues and try reinstalling apps that are causing the problem.