Amazon’s Fire Tablet normally restricts you to the Amazon Appstore. But the Fire Tablet runs Fire OS, which is based on Android. You can install Google’s Play Store and gain access to every Android app, including Gmail, Chrome, Google Maps, Hangouts, and the over one million apps in Google Play.
This doesn’t even require rooting your Fire Tablet. After you run the script below — this process should take less than a half hour — you’ll be able to use the Play Store just as you could on any other normal Android device.
Note: These instructions are intended for Amazon’s 5th generation Fire Tablet — the first $50 Fire Tablet. The Fire Tablet was using Fire OS version 5.0.1.
Prepare Your Fire Tablet
You’ll need a PC and a USB cable to do this. The cable included with your Fire Tablet will work just fine.On your Fire Tablet, open the Settings app and tap “Device Options” under Device.
Locate the “Serial Number” field on this page and tap it repeatedly. Tap it seven or more times and you’ll see a “Developer Options” option appear below it. Tap “Developer Options.”
Locate the “Enable ADB” option this page and tap it to activate it. This feature is normally just for developers, so you’ll need to agree to the warning to continue.
After enabling adb access, connect your Fire Tablet to your computer with the included USB cable.
Install the ADB Drivers
The script we recommend below tells you to install the drivers in a different way, but we don’t like its method. It encourages you to install unsigned drivers included with the package. This isn’t just a security risk — it’s actually impossible to do on modern 64-bit bit versions of Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 without rebooting and disabling driver signature verification.Rather than installing unsigned drivers, download the Google USB Driver package from Google. Unzip the usb-driver folder inside it.
Open the Device Manager by pressing Windows Key + R, typing “devmgmt.msc” (without the quotes) into the Run dialog box, and pressing Enter.
In the Device Manager window, locate the “Fire” device. It may be under “Other devices.”
Go through the following steps to install the Google USB Driver:
- Right-click the “Fire” device in the Device Manager and select “Properties.”
- Click the “Update Driver” button.
- Click “Browse my computer for driver software.”
- Click “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.”
- Click “Have Disk.”
- Click “Browse” and browse to the “usb-driver” folder you just extracted.
- Click “OK,” and click “Next” to continue.
Select the “Android Composite ADB Interface” driver and click “Next” to install it. Windows will warn you that it may not be compatible, but you can ignore this warning and continue. The driver is compatible.
Download and Run the Script
It should be possible to just download several apps in APK form and install them. However, if you do this, you’ll still need to use the adb command to set a permission on at least one of the apps. So, rather than doing this the long way, we’ll be using a script that installs the apps and sets the permissions for you.On your PC, visit the Root Junky website and download the “Amazon-Fire-5th-Gen-Install-Play-Store.zip” file. Extract or unzip the contents of the .zip file to a folder on your computer. Double-click the “1-Install-Play-Store.bat” file to get started.
Unlock your Fire tablet and agree to the “Allow USB debugging” request. If you don’t see this option, close the Command Prompt window and launch the .bat file above again.
When you reach the first screen, type “2” and press Enter to have the tool install the Google Play Store.
You’ll need the appropriate drivers installed for this, of course. But, if you saw the “Allow USB Debugging” prompt on your Fire tablet and have agreed to it, you’ll know the drivers are already in working order.
The script will install the required packages on your connected Fire Tablet, including Google Play Services and the Google Play Store app.
Reboot your Fire Tablet when you’re asked to do so. Just long-press the power button, tap “OK” when you’re asked if you want to shut it down, and then turn it on again.
You can unplug the Fire Tablet from your computer now, too. You may also want to disable the “adb” option you enabled earlier.
Use the Google Play Store
After you reboot, you’ll find the Play Store and Google Settings shortcuts on your home screen. Tap “Play Store” and you’ll be able to sign in with an existing Google account or create a new Google account.
It may not appear to work normally after you sign in, but just give it some time. The Google Play Store and Google Play Services will automatically update themselves in the background. This may take as much as ten minutes.
You can now search the store and install Google apps like Gmail and Chrome that aren’t available in the Amazon App Store. Any Android app from the Google Play Store should work — at least in theory.
Some apps may require you update Google Play Services. If they do, they’ll tell you and take you to the Google Play Services page in Google Play, where you can update Google Play Services with a single tap of a button.
Thanks to sd_shadow on the XDA-Developers forums for writing some of this up, and Root Junky for the script. If you need troubleshooting help or you’d like to do this manually without a script, head over to the XDA-Developers forum thread for more information.
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