Ok so I’ve been seing many cases of ppl running low on space and space “mysteriously” disappearing on the 4K Max. Well after all the latest updates of the FireTV OS, mine is now 7.2.7.9 and 2 days ago my storage suddenly went from 2.25 down to 1.6 . Now for me that’s too low. I like keeping it above 2 and find my stick performs better. I was at a loss to figure out why, but did notice that the unified debloat toolbox was no longer blocking things like Amazon kids, music, shopping ad nauseum. S I wondered if this might be the source of my loss. The hunt was on. I cleared absolutely everything out and still just 1.6 free. I had added an external Sandisc usb 3.0 for added space and adding tons of apps to it and had read some claims that data was still stored on the stick from apps on the usb. From my investigation that doesn’t seem to be so or at least my space loss wasn’t from that. Then I remembered a routine I use to use when I had ES File Explorer, and immediately went onto Troy’s RAI and installed ES. I then opened it, went to Apps, loaded that page and then clicked on things like Amazon Shopping and a popup opens and I click “uninstall”. Now unfortunately this doesn’t actually ininstall it but gives you a popup saying it’s being returned to “factory” setting. I went through everything but left the “appstore” alone as clearing the data in it changes my home screen setup to what Amazon configures it as after the update. I rebooted ran the routine a second time again rebooted and immediately went into My Fire TV>storage and holy crap, my free space had gone from 1.6 to 3.07 and that’s huge. But would it remain that way? The answer is “almost”. After my usual nightly power down, I fired the Max up watched yhe news, read and replied to some stuff in the insider and then checked my free space. It was still at an amazing 2.99 and the Amazon apps did not seem to be accumulating a lot of cache. Now I did notice there is another update and I wonder how this may affect the returning of Amazon apps to factory. Going to give it a go now. I’ll report back. Give this a try and see if it’ll help you too. Ok, the update was a “component” update and put Amazon shopping back into my apps. I loaded ES file explorer, went to apps, and immediately returned the Shopping to factory. My free space has dropped a bit more but still 2.93
When I had a second gen FireTV box, with the built in Micro SD slot, I would “move” apps to the SD card. Hardly any space was used on the SD card and the Box’s internal memory hardly went down at all. From this I concluded that most of the app’s code and data was still on the Box. Since then I’ve never bothered with external storage on the Amazon Fire devices. I go through the apps every couple of weeks and clear the cache (and data if it’s not needed) to get my memory back up above 2GB. And every 6 months-or-so I do a complete factory reset and re-install. But the solution really is for Amazon to increase the memory on all of its FireTV devices to 16 GB and be done with it!
I add a ton of apps for settings studying and configuration. As the Sticks have less than 5GB mine fills up too quickly and that means I have immediate access to minimal apps, with the 16GB addition I can load dozens and dozens of apps and have them handy to assist others in troubleshooting immediately. No negative impact to my Max that I’ve noticed.
Thank you for all the information. I have still kept my 4K max blocked at 7.2.5.5. I have heard about this method of cleanup but don’t want to mess with the wrong app. I will slowly go through them and try and reclaim some storage back. I also have too many apps on my devices that I don’t use but they have not hampered anything so I have left them. Some will go and they all add up.
All Amazon apps except the appstore are just fine to return to factory, no matter what version of FireTV you have.
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