Remote for Fire TV & FireStick

Review by eFreeware

The most distinctive thing about Remote for Fire TV & FireStick is that it doesn't just replace the remote sitting on your coffee table. It also lets you mirror your phone's screen and cast photos and videos to a Fire TV, which turns a phone into something closer to a small control hub for the television. BoostVision built it specifically for Fire TV hardware, and it has picked up more than 10 million installs since its release in January 2022, with a 3.9 average from just under 99,000 ratings.

That combination is what makes it interesting. A basic remote app is a convenience; adding a keyboard for typing searches and a way to push your own media to the big screen gives it a reason to exist beyond saving you a trip to the couch. The catch is that it leans on your home network and a setting buried in the Fire TV menus, so it rewards people who don't mind a little setup.

It is best suited to Android users who already own a Fire TV Stick, Cube, Box or Fire TV and want their phone to handle the everyday jobs: power, volume, navigation and text entry. If your household is built around a different streaming platform, or you would rather not touch developer settings on your TV, the app's core requirement will get in the way before any of its features do.

What the app does with your Fire TV

The heart of the app is a full remote control. It covers the usual ground: powering the Fire TV on and off, adjusting volume up and down, and moving around the interface the way a physical remote does. The developer describes it as behaving like a real Fire TV remote, and for the basics that is the promise you are buying into.

There is also a keyboard feature, which is the part I find most useful in principle. Typing a movie title or a search term with a phone keyboard is far less tedious than clicking through an on-screen grid of letters, and it is the kind of small improvement that changes how often you bother searching at all.

Alongside that sits quick access to favorite channels and apps, plus an auto-connect control button for Fire devices. Those two features point at the same idea: cutting down the steps between picking up your phone and getting to something you actually want to watch. Whether the auto-connect button lives up to its name depends on your network behaving, but the intent is clearly to make the app feel less like a tool you have to operate and more like one that is simply ready.

Mirroring and casting from your phone

Screen mirroring is the feature that separates this app from a plain remote. The developer says it mirrors your phone screen to the Fire TV with low latency, which matters because a mirror that lags behind your taps is worse than no mirror at all. It is the kind of claim that only your own Wi-Fi can really settle.

Casting works a little differently. Rather than duplicating everything on your screen, it sends local photos and videos from your phone's album to the Fire TV. For showing pictures from a trip or playing a clip you shot yourself, that is a more direct route than mirroring the whole interface and hoping nothing embarrassing pops up in a notification.

Both of these depend on a companion app. BoostVision asks you to install Screen Mirroring for Fire TV, its receiver app, on the TV device itself, and the mirroring flow walks you through downloading it the first time. That is an extra step, and it is worth knowing about before you start, because the remote functions and the mirroring functions have different requirements even though they live in the same app.

Getting connected: Wi-Fi, ADB and troubleshooting

Setup is where this app asks the most of you. Your Android phone and your Fire TV need to be on the same Wi-Fi network, and before any of it works you have to enable ADB debugging on the Fire device. That is not a setting most people stumble across on their own, and it is the single biggest hurdle between installing the app and actually using it.

Once those two conditions are met, the connection process is straightforward in principle: tap to connect and let the app search your home network for Fire devices. The developer notes that the app can only connect when both devices share the same network, which means a phone on cellular data, or on a guest network that isolates clients, won't get anywhere.

For the cases where a connection refuses to happen, BoostVision offers a blunt remedy: reinstalling the app and rebooting the TV resolves most problems. It is not an elegant fix, but it is a concrete one, and having a defined first move when things go wrong is more useful than vague advice to check your settings.

Price, ads and in-app purchases

The app is free to download and carries advertising. It also offers in-app purchases. If you are weighing it up, go in expecting a free app with ads and optional spending rather than a one-time purchase.

This is a common shape for remote and casting utilities, and it is worth being clear-eyed about. A free app with ads and purchases is not a problem in itself.

None of that changes what the app does. The remote functions, the keyboard, the mirroring and the casting are all presented as part of the package.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious alternative is the physical remote that came with your Fire TV. It never needs a Wi-Fi network and never asks you to enable debugging. What it can't do is give you a full keyboard, mirror your phone screen, or push photos and videos from your album to the television. If those extras are what you're after, the comparison stops being close.

A second option is the broader category of screen mirroring and casting tools that work across platforms. Those tend to be built around getting content onto a display rather than around controlling a specific device, so they rarely replicate the button-by-button remote experience. This app's narrow focus on Fire TV hardware is exactly why it can offer power, volume, navigation and text entry in one place.

Then there is the question of what you already own. If your television is an Amazon Fire TV model, this app is aimed at your setup by design. If it isn't, the ADB requirement and the Fire-specific receiver app mean the whole thing is built around hardware you don't have. BoostVision also makes clear that it has no affiliation with Amazon and that this is not an official Amazon product, which is worth remembering when you judge how closely it mirrors the real thing.

A phone remote worth the setup for Fire TV owners

Remote for Fire TV & FireStick suits one specific audience: Android users with a Fire TV device who want their phone to do more than the bundled remote can. The combination of a full remote, a keyboard for searching, screen mirroring and photo and video casting covers a lot of ground in a single free download, and the auto-connect button suggests the developer has thought about the friction of opening an app every time you want to change the volume.

The costs are real but manageable. You need to enable ADB debugging, keep both devices on the same network, and install a second app on the TV before mirroring will work. Ads and in-app purchases are part of the deal. If any of those give you pause, the physical remote remains a perfectly good answer, and it will keep working when your Wi-Fi doesn't.

For everyone else with a Fire TV Stick or Cube sitting under the television, this is a sensible addition. It is not a replacement for the hardware remote so much as a second, more capable one that happens to live on the phone already in your hand.

What's new in version 2.0.2

* Improving User Experience * Work with FireMirrorReceiver in your FireTV * Remote Control Amazon Fire Stick & Fire TV * Cast photo/video from album to Fire Stick TV * Mirror screen to Fire TV in realtime * Auto connection to Fire TV * Quick access to your Favourite Channels