How to Add More Storage to an Amazon Fire TV Stick

We'll show you how to bulk up the storage on Amazon's streaming device.

Have you ever been enjoying your favorite TV show or movie on your Amazon Fire TV Stick, only to be interrupted by an error message? If your Fire TV tells you that you don't have enough internal storage, you can add some by connecting a USB drive. We'll show you what you need, and the steps you'll take to fix the problem.

There are a few different Fire TV versions. They sometimes have issues you can troubleshoot, but as far as storage space, they only have about 6 GB to work with. If you have lots of apps on your Fire TV, for example, Hulu, Netflix, or Tubi, you might run low on storage space. Even if you have a brand-new Fire TV Stick, you may see the error message if your Amazon account has migrated your apps from a previous Fire TV Stick.

You have a few options to fix the problem. You can free up space by removing or clearing the cache of installed apps, or you can connect a USB drive to your Fire TV. Connecting a USB drive may not be as easy as it sounds, because an Amazon Fire TV Stick doesn't include an external USB port.

To add more storage, you first need to purchase a few items if you don't already own them. You'll need an On The Go (OTG) cable 2-pack and a USB drive. Amazon recommends USB 3.0 and no more than 128 GB of storage space.

The OTG cable includes a dongle USB-A port that connects to your Fire TV power supply. Once you have the cable, follow these steps:

Depending on the Fire TV version you have, you may see a message indicating the storage space and applications are being optimized. This can take around ten minutes.

You can set your Fire TV to integrate the USB drive as internal storage. Doing so can add storage, eliminate error messages, and increase performance. If you'd prefer to keep the existing data on your USB drive, leave the default setting as external storage. This way, you could download movies to the USB drive, and watch them on different devices including your Fire TV, computers, etc.

Here's how to set your USB drive as internal storage:

You'll see Formatting USB Drive for a few minutes.

Instead of installing an external drive, you can try uninstalling individual apps on your Fire TV device to clear up space. If you don't want to remove them, you can also clear the data and cache on individual apps. These steps may require a bit of time, and they may not solve the problem as well as adding more storage.

To clear up space on individual apps:

Another workaround would be to factory reset your Fire TV Stick:

Adding more storage to your Amazon Fire TV is straightforward, although it requires a few steps, and a small investment in some hardware. It may be well worth the effort because you don't want any interruptions when watching your favorite TV show or movie.

Josh Dollaghan is passionate about home improvement, especially when it comes to next-gen, smart home products. He is a graduate of Colorado State University and has been writing professionally since 2011. He loves spending his spare time with his wife and their two kids. He also enjoys exploring the great outdoors, reading, and composing music.