Put your what’s-on board on the TV in the bar

1. Check which stick you are buying

   This is the one that bites, and it is the only step you cannot undo with a setting.

   Amazon has moved its newest sticks off Android onto its own Vega OS. A Vega stick cannot install the kiosk app this whole route depends on, and nothing on the box tells you which one you have in your hand.

   • BuyFire TV Stick 4K Max — the one we would buy. Also fine: Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, the 2024 Fire TV Stick HD, the Fire TV Cube, and TVs with Fire TV built in. All still run Fire OS.
   • AvoidFire TV Stick 4K Select and the 2026 Fire TV Stick HD. Both run Vega OS. They are perfectly good streaming sticks and useless for this.

   The two HD sticks look almost identical. The 2026 one has Wi-Fi 6, rounded corners and the words “Fire TV” printed on the stick itself; the 2024 one has Wi-Fi 5, square corners and no printing. If you are buying in a shop, that is what to look at.

   Worth knowing: Amazon has said every future Fire TV Stick will run Vega. This route has a shelf life, and when Fire OS sticks run out the answer is an Android TV box — same app, same steps. See if your stick cannot do this.

2. The rest of the shopping list

   Nothing exotic, but two of these are what people get wrong.

   • A spare HDMI socket on the TV, and a TV you are happy to leave on for the hours you are open.
   • A mains plug near the TV, and the power supply that came in the box. Many TV USB sockets cannot reliably power a stick, and one that browns out at nine on a Friday looks exactly like a broken board.
   • Wi-fi that reaches the TV. Stand where the TV is and look at your phone before you buy anything.
   • The kiosk app licence — about £9, once, for that screen (Fully Kiosk PLUS, 8.90 € at the time of writing). The free version works, but it puts its own reminder over the page, which is not what you want facing the room.
   • Your board’s address, from the Portal under In-Pub Display. It looks like clockapub.co.uk/d/your-pub.

   The board itself costs nothing, and there is no monthly fee for any of this.

3. Does it matter whether you use an iPhone, Android, Mac or Windows?

   For the stick itself, no. Here is the honest answer for each.

   Everything below is installed on the stick, using the stick’s own remote. Your phone or computer only makes two jobs easier: typing an address, and finishing the setup sitting down.

   iPhone or iPad	Install Amazon’s Fire TV app and use it as the remote — it gives you a real keyboard instead of pecking at letters with a D-pad. There is no way to push an app onto the stick from an iPhone, so use the on-stick route in step 5, which is what we would recommend to everyone anyway.
   Android	The same Fire TV app, the same keyboard. Nothing extra to do.
   Windows, macOS or Linux	Same as above, plus one useful extra: once the kiosk app is installed, switch on its Remote Administration and do every remaining setting from your own browser at http://[the stick’s address]:2323. Far quicker than typing a URL with a remote.
   All four	The Portal — where the board’s content actually comes from — runs in any browser on any of them. Nothing about what your board shows depends on what you own.

4. Set the stick up before you install anything

   Five settings. Skip them and the board gets covered up or falls asleep.

   1. Plug in, join the wi-fi, sign in. Use a pub Amazon account rather than your personal one — you will hand this screen over one day.
   2. Settings → Display & Sounds → Screensaver → Start time → Never. Miss this and Amazon’s photo screensaver slides over your board every few minutes.
   3. In the same menu, if your version of Fire OS also offers Power saving or a device sleep timer, turn those off too.
   4. Turn on HDMI CEC device control, so the stick wakes the TV and switches it to the right input on its own.
   5. On the TV itself: turn off eco or ambient dimming, and any “switch off after four hours of inactivity” setting. A TV showing a board nobody touches looks idle to the TV.

5. Install the kiosk browser

   Silk, the stick’s own browser, will not start itself after a power cut and will not hold the screen awake. A kiosk browser does both and shows nothing but your page.

   1. Settings → My Fire TV → About. Highlight the device’s name and press the select button seven times. A message confirms Developer options are now switched on.
   2. Settings → My Fire TV → Developer options → Install unknown apps, and turn it on for Downloader.
   3. From the home screen, search for Downloader (the orange icon) and install it from the Amazon Appstore.
   4. Open Downloader, go to its browser tab, and open fully-kiosk.com. Use the site’s own Get APK file download — going through their site means you get the current version rather than one we froze into a link.
   5. Install it when the download finishes, open it, and allow the permissions it asks for.
   If Developer options never appear, or Downloader refuses to install anything, you have a Vega stick. Nothing you can do on the device changes that — see if your stick cannot do this.

6. Point it at your board

   One address, three switches.

   1. In Fully Kiosk, open Settings → Web Content Settings → Start URL and enter your board address exactly as the Portal shows it: clockapub.co.uk/d/your-pub.
   2. Turn on Keep Screen On, Launch on Boot and the app’s fullscreen option. Those three are the whole difference between a screen that runs itself and one you restart every morning.
   3. Buy the PLUS licence from inside the app (about £9, once, for that screen). Without it a reminder appears over the page, and this screen faces your customers.
   4. Leave auto-reload off. The board refreshes itself every five minutes, and if the wi-fi drops it keeps showing what it last had rather than going blank.
   5. Back out of the settings. The board should fill the screen.
   Typing that address: use the Fire TV phone app’s keyboard, or switch on Remote Administration in Fully Kiosk and type it from your laptop at http://[the stick’s address]:2323. The stick’s address is in Settings → My Fire TV → About → Network.

7. Make it come back on by itself

   The whole point: nobody should have to touch anything on a Monday morning.

   Launch on Boot — the switch in step 6 — is what brings the board back after the power goes off and on again. Nothing else does it; an installed app on a tablet cannot.

   Test it properly. Pull the stick’s plug, count to ten, plug it back in, and walk away. Two minutes later the board should be on the screen with nothing touched. If it is not, Launch on Boot did not take — go back and check it.

   Leave the stick on mains power the whole time, even overnight; it costs pennies and it takes the boot out of your morning. If the sockets go off at the wall every night with everything else, that is fine — the test above is exactly that.

   Nothing on our side ever needs restarting. Change something in the Portal and the screen picks it up within five minutes.

8. Then leave the TV alone

   Everything the board does is set from the Portal, not from the screen.

   A Fire TV remote has no pointer, so the board’s on-screen controls — the category chips, the dots, the Cinema button — cannot be reached from a TV. They do not need to be. Under In-Pub Display in the Portal you set what rotates, how many cards, how long each one stays, the font for your pub’s name, whether dish prices show, and TV-safe edges if your TV crops the picture at the sides.

   The screen is then a read-only thing on a wall, which is what it should be.

Hardware and app details checked 20 September 2026, from AFTVnews on which Fire TVs still support sideloading and fully-kiosk.com. Amazon changes models and menus often, so check the box before you buy. We have no connection to either.