In this How To, I reveal the steps for how to turn off sleep mode on an Amazon Fire TV Stick. I recently decided to setup a dedicated Fire TV Stick for 2 use cases:
1. Visitors to mirror/share their device’s screen
2. Security camera monitor to view Arlo cameras
During testing and after giving Alexa commands to either open the mirroring app or Arlo live camera feeds, I frequently experienced a black/blank screen. It took me a while to figure my Fire TV Stick was sleeping! I found the “Never” start time in the screensaver settings, but this did not prevent the Fire TV Stick from still going to sleep every 20 minutes.
I was surprised to discover; Amazon does not offer an option in the FireOS settings to stop a Fire TV Stick from going to sleep. I looked at some apps which claim to keep the Fire TV Stick awake but you must remember to open the app each time your Fire TV Stick has restarted, and I will forget!
To solve this issue, I used adbLink to change my Fire TV Stick’s sleep timeout settings.
Are you annoyed when waking up your Fire TV Stick to find your apps have automatically closed? Or having to wait for your apps to re-open and losing important app add-on settings? If so, you will benefit from this detailed tutorial.
Fire TV Stick Preparation
Enable ADB Debugging
The first step is to enable ADB debugging on your Fire TV Stick.
In your Fire TV Stick’s home screen, head over to the Settings menu, select My Fire TV and then Developer Options. Turn ADB Debugging ON.
You will be presented with a secure connection screen and need to confirm it is OK to connect to your PC and allow USB debugging. You will have the option for your Fire TV Stick to remember this choice in future.
Find Fire TV Stick IP Address
Next up, navigate back to the Settings menu, select My Fire TV followed by About and finally Network.
Jot down your IP Address as you will need this for adbLink to communicate with your Fire TV Stick.
Install adbLink on your PC
Add your Fire TV Stick as a Device in adbLink
To connect adbLink with your Fire TV Stick, you need to open adbLink and click the New button.
You will see a Device Record window appear. You only need to complete the Description and Address fields for adbLink to communicate with your Fire TV Stick.
Connect adbLink with your Fire TV Stick
After entering a name for your Fire TV Stick in Description and the IP address that you obtained earlier in Address. Click the Save and then Connect buttons. That’s it!
To verify your Fire TV Stick is connected to adbLink, check the Connected devices box has the name of your Fire TV Stick and the Connection status box is displaying an “IP connection” message. You should also see “ABD running” at the bottom right of the adbLink window.
New Method (ADB Utility)
Jocala, author of adbLink has kindly provided a new super easy method to turn off your Fire TV Stick’s sleep mode and delay the screensaver without having to enter commands as detailed in the old method.
Navigate to the adbLink toolbar and click Utility followed by Set timers.
Turn Off Fire TV Stick Sleep Timer
The Set timers window will appear. Your Fire TV Stick’s default sleep value of “1200000” milliseconds / 20 minutes will be pre-selected.
Simply select Sleep Off and hit the OK button.
Turn Off Fire TV Stick Screensaver
In the same Set timers window, your Fire TV Stick’s default screensaver value will be “300000” milliseconds / 5 minutes.
If you select Screensaver Off, the current value will update to “2147460000” milliseconds / 25 days. This is maximum screensaver start time delay.
Click the OK button to save the new timer adjustment settings.
Confirmation
After saving your new Fire TV Stick’s sleep & screensaver settings, a timer values confirmation message will pop up. Click OK.
Old Method (ADB Shell)
Check Fire TV Stick Sleep Timeout Settings
You can use the ADB Shell feature within adbLink and send a command to check the current sleep timeout setting on your Fire TV Stick.
Click the ADB Shell button and you will see the command window appear. Type or copy & paste (right-click mouse) the following command and then tap Enter:
settings get secure sleep_timeout
The result “1200000” is the number of milliseconds that a Fire TV stick is set to sleep by default. If you would like to know how many minutes this is, divide the number of milliseconds by 60000, which in this case is 20 minutes.
Change Fire TV Stick Sleep Timeout Settings
We are now at the final step, we will send 1 command to your Fire TV Stick which will turn off sleep mode.
Type or copy & paste (right-click mouse) the following command and then tap Enter:
settings put secure sleep_timeout 0
To verify this command and check your Fire TV Stick sleep mode is disabled, we can send the command covered in the previous step again:
settings get secure sleep_timeout
Check Fire TV Stick Screensaver Start Time Settings
You can also use ADB Shell to check the current screensaver timeout setting on your Fire TV Stick. I was curious to check the result of mine because I had already set my screensaver start time to “Never” in the Fire TV Stick settings.
Type or copy & paste (right-click mouse) the following command and then tap Enter:
settings get system screen_off_timeout
Following the same logic as the sleep timeout process, I was expecting the result to be 0 but it was actually “2147460000” milliseconds which is nearly 25 days, even though my Fire TV Stick screensaver start time is set to “Never.”
Change Fire TV Stick Screensaver Start Time Settings
Update: Unfortunately you can no longer extend your Fire TV Stick’s screensaver start time for more than “2147460000” milliseconds.
Unlike turning off your Fire TV Stick’s sleep timeout, sending a command of 0 does not disable the screensaver start time. However, you can increase the number of days before your Fire TV Stick screensaver starts. For example, just over 60 days is “5214399999.” You can use Google’s milliseconds to days calculator to determine your desired screensaver start time.
Type or copy & paste (right-click mouse) the following command and then tap Enter:
settings put system screen_off_timeout 5214399999
Simply change the number of milliseconds at the end of the command depending on your chosen screensaver start time.
To verify this command and check when your Fire TV Stick screensaver is set to start, we can send the command covered in the previous step again:
settings get system screen_off_timeout
Enhance Your Fire TV Stick Privacy
When you’re browsing the internet or streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, your Fire TV Stick is constantly generating data. This means your Internet Service Provider (ISP) has full access to your web activity including all streaming services & websites.
PRIVACY ALERT
The following information is available to any website you visit:
Your IP Address: 2001:569:fbd4:c600:f015:15cf:e2d8:287e
Your Location: Tumbler Ridge, Canada
Your Internet Service Provider: TELUS Communications Inc
Use a VPN to hide these details and protect your privacy.
To protect yourself from this risk, use Digibit’s Virtual Private Network (VPN) which will make sure all your private data is completely hidden. The extra bonus of a VPN is accessing region-locked content.
To sign up, click store and select VPN from the dropdown menu.
Wrap-Up
Please feel free to drop a comment if you enjoyed reading this article today or if you have any questions. How did you cope with your Fire TV Stick often going to sleep and apps automatically closing? Do you have any tips for how to permanently disable your Fire TV Stick’s screensaver?
