The writing was on the wall, and now it's on Amazon's website for developers. The company has confirmed that all future Fire TV Sticks, starting with the model released in October, will run on its proprietary Vega operating system. This new OS comes with a significant catch for power users: it does not support the sideloading of Android apps or any other software from outside the official Amazon Appstore.
Amazon's developer page, which has included this statement since at least January according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, makes the prerequisite clear. For an app to run on a Vega-powered Fire device, it must "is already published in the Amazon Appstore." The company has not made this declaration outrightly to consumers, and Amazon declined to comment to the publication Lowpass this week after multiple sources reportedly confirmed the plan.
Some consumers are just now learning about this commitment to Vega OS, perhaps via notices on product pages. For the new Fire TV Stick HD announced this week, a notice states, "For enhanced security, this device prevents sideloading or installing apps from unknown sources. Only apps from the Amazon Appstore are available for download." This positions the closed ecosystem as a security feature, a classic corporate maneuver.
Vega is not entirely new; the Echo Show 5 was the first device to run it in November 2023, followed by the Echo Hub in April 2024. The first Vega-powered streaming stick was the Fire TV 4K Select released in October. While Vega devices can still support sideloading, that privilege is reserved exclusively for developers who register their devices, effectively locking out the average user from software freedom in the name of 'enhanced security.'