- Let's talk about the 10 best free apps
that you should get on your Amazon FireStick
or Firecube or FireSmart TV, whatever you've got.
Let's talk about the best free apps for it.
Now there's a lot to cover here, so let's get started.
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All right, thanks for joining me today everybody,
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Okay, let's dive in.
The first thing we're gonna do
before we talk about the specific apps,
is a little tutorial on how to actually download these apps.
So, if you're not brand new to a FireStick,
if you've used it before,
you can go ahead and skip ahead just a little bit.
But if this is your first time with one of these devices
and you wanna know the basics of how to go
about getting these apps, let's talk about that first.
So, from my home screen up on the top of the screen,
I'm gonna come over here to apps.
Oops, little too far.
Okay, and from the apps,
I can check out the featured apps,
the games, what not that they suggest for me.
So I can kind of browse through it that way.
Or if there's an app, you know you want to get,
but you're not finding it really quickly in this,
you can always just voice search it.
So, obviously I've already got this one but Netflix.
(upbeat music)
Now okay, and so it's gonna let me search for Netflix.
If you don't have it,
it will let you download the app from here.
So for instance,
I don't think I have this one.
WatchFreeFlix, I'm not going to today,
but yeah, I can go ahead and get that app and download it.
So, simple as that, that's all you have to do.
Once you do that,
you press the home button again,
go back to the home screen,
and it will show up on your app list.
To find the full app list,
everything that you've got,
and this is where we're gonna be spending
a lot of time on this video,
is you come down here past recent your apps and channels,
and instead of scrolling to the right to look at all these,
you can just click once to the left,
see all, and that'll show you your full list
of every app that you have on your Fire TV device.
Okay, so like I said,
this is where we're gonna be spending a lot of our time
is from here.
In fact, the first apps
that I'm gonna tell you about are Stirr and Pluto TV.
These are very similar,
but let's start with Stirr.
What these do is mimic your cable or satellite experience.
So, if you've just cut the cord,
and you want something that feels a little familiar to you,
then Stirr is going to be great for that.
So up on here, I can go to channels,
and on this page, you're gonna see a channel listing
just like you would have seen on cable or satellite.
The only difference here,
is that the channels are not the same
as what you would've gotten.
So, there's no TBS, there's no TNT,
there's no CNN or whatever.
These are all kind of the stepchildren of those channels.
So, these will have just as much entertainment,
it just might not be the same kind
of things that you're used to.
News, movies, live TV, whatever.
It's all here.
Just like I said, not what you're used to.
So look through here,
there's guaranteed to be something
that will strike your fancy,
or you can go back to that home screen
and they do have some on-demand content.
Meaning it's not scheduled,
you can watch it whenever you want to.
With Stirr, it's not a ton of on-demand content,
but yes, there is some
and you can definitely take a look through that,
but if you want more on demand content,
then we go to Pluto TV.
In fact, I would say that as a general rule,
I like Pluto better than Stirr,
but the difference is
they are going to have different content.
So, it's good to have both
so that you can flip between the two
and see if there's something on
that you would rather watch on one versus the other.
So, really quickly starting with the live TV,
like I said it's going to feel very familiar
with that same kind of timeline that you can click through.
Or if we come up to on demand,
then yes, they do have a better,
I would argue a better definitely a more robust
on-demand library on Pluto versus Stirr.
Either way, both of them definitely worth checking out.
All right, next up is news on.
NewsOn is exactly what it says here.
Live local news nationwide.
And that's what it is.
This is local news.
So, the reason I'm highlighting this one
over any of the other news apps,
which are are many, they are plentiful,
many of them are very good,
but NewsOn I really like because it is local news.
These are news feeds from local stations,
and it's gonna be based on where you live
or what you save in your favorites.
So for instance, I'm here in the salt Lake city area.
And so I've got my local CBS affiliate,
but I can also see stuff from Idaho and Colorado,
Nevada, places neighboring markets
with their local news feeds,
if that's interesting to me,
or if I I've got a brother somewhere
in another part of the country,
so I want to go by location,
and I can search for any market that I want.
So if I've got somebody,
I know somebody in Minnesota and I wanna say,
hey, what's going on in Minnesota these days,
I've got Duluth, Minneapolis, Rochester,
all of these different markets
that I can search for different feeds from.
Now once you click into these,
it's pretty cool, not only can you watch a live feed
if there is one going on,
but they also saved the last several days newscasts.
So if you miss one
or you weren't up for the three o'clock newscast
in the morning,
you can actually go back
and watch those later on demand, pretty sweet.
Next up is PBS and PBS kids.
This is kind of a twofer,
'cause they both operate the same way.
Essentially, all you need to do is log into PBS on computer
or your phone and create an account there
so that it knows where you live
and which content to serve up.
And then when you do that, you can log into the PBS app,
and you get access to whatever you would have access to
on your PBS station,
local stuff and national stuff as well.
Again, not much more to it than that,
just depends on where you live
as far as what is going to be served up to you.
All right, how about another twofer,
this is turning into like a top 12
or 13 instead of a top 10,
but let's talk about kanopy and hoopla,
because these both operate the same way,
and they just have different, they serve different markets.
So for me, it's gonna be kanopy.
And the way that this works,
is kanopy and hoopla get access to the content
that your local library has access to.
So as you probably know,
you can go down to your local library
and not just check out books
but you can also get movies as well.
A lot of DVDs for movies, TV shows,
and anything that you're gonna be able to access
there at the library.
You can actually just get on demand here
through kanopy or hoopla.
But once you log in,
you decide what you wanna watch,
it is going to have you log in
using your library card number and all that.
So, there is a little login process,
but it's all free to you.
All right, let's talk about Tubi.
Tubi is the original free streaming service
or at least it kind of feels that way.
It's been around for quite a while,
this is the oldest
and best Netflix impersonator in my opinion.
Tubi has a lot of really great content.
The only difference between it and Netflix
is the library that it's going to have,
and the fact that it is commercial supportive.
That's gonna be the case with a lot of
the free stuff that you stream,
it's gonna be commercial supportive,
they got to pay for it somehow.
And that is the case here with Tubi.
So if we go through,
here you'll see that
they do have quite a bit of really good content,
it's not just all a bunch of B movies or something,
there is a lot of good stuff.
And they even have some live feeds for news as well.
Not too bad.
Crackle is very similar to Tubi.
I still in my head,
I call it Sony Crackle,
because they used to have a majority ownership in it,
now they don't.
But yeah, Crackle, go get crackle.
You can log in and create an account,
but you don't have to.
I can go down here and skip that.
If I create an account,
then that's going to allow me to save shows
to watch for later,
it's gonna give me that continue watching icon.
And so it may be,
if you're going to use this for any amount of time,
then you may want to go ahead and create an account,
but you don't have to.
One of the biggest differences between Crackle and Tubi is,
if I go into TV shows or movies,
this category right here, Crackle original.
So Crackle actually makes its own shows.
Now these are not going to be mega A list,
Hollywood fare, but it's not bad.
I've sampled a few of them,
and it really is pretty good stuff.
So obviously what they're doing,
is they're trying to get you,
used to coming to Crackle for the originals
and then they've got their whole other library
that you can check out.
But as far as that goes,
they actually do a pretty good job as far as I'm concerned.
So yeah, go check out Crackle.
All right, YouTube.
YouTube, obviously we all love YouTube,
you're on YouTube right now,
probably watching me.
So, of course I want you to do that.
But with YouTube you can get it on your TV
and I highly recommend that you do.
There's some stuff even on YouTube,
that's just better on a big screen.
So make sure you've got that downloaded,
you can log in, you get your whole library,
you can search on here just like you would on your PC.
But there's one thing I wanna point out,
that I have found really useful
with YouTube in the last year or so,
since I figured out that I could do this.
If I go to the left here,
and come down to the news section,
there are a lot of live feeds.
So if there's something going on,
right now as I'm recording this,
they're doing the impeachment trial in the Senate.
And so I can get live feeds
if there's something going on,
those are often gonna be on YouTube
from a lot of the major news carriers.
So, I don't have to fight through any other apps
to find live feeds,
I can find a lot of them right here.
Spotify is a must have
as far as I'm concerned or something like this.
If you prefer Pandora, maybe go check out Pandora.
But if you use any of these music apps
outside of your streaming experience,
just know that,
yeah you can bring them into streaming as well.
So Spotify, is again gonna have the same library
that I have just here on my TV.
So if I'm doing something
where I I don't actually wanna watch TV,
I just wanna have some noise on in the background,
a house party, remember those,
or I'm doing the dishes or something like that,
then yes, Spotify, Pandora, whatever your flavor is,
definitely necessary on your FireStick.
And lastly Twitch.
All right, Twitch is very much a niche product,
but I really, really highly recommend it
especially if there are young people in your home.
Maybe you're a young person,
or maybe you have kids or grandkids in the home,
a basically Twitch
the easy version of how to explain Twitch is,
this is watching people play video games, that's it, right.
Which maybe to you doesn't sound that fun,
but maybe it does.
And if it doesn't,
maybe there's somebody in your home who would be into that.
But it's really fun, really interesting,
you pick your favorite game
or you pick your favorite streamer and watch their feeds.
And so a lot of times
you'll get professional Esports matches,
that are being broadcast on Twitch.
Or you can just watch somebody
in their basement playing World of Warcraft or whatever.
It's actually quite a lot of fun.
So, there you have it,
the top 10 or so apps
that you definitely need to download on your FireStick.
Now you'll notice I skipped over quite a few things
that actually are free and are great
because they already come with your FireStick.
And so you probably already know about them.
But I'll point them out really quickly.
The news app is fantastic
as far as a news aggregator.
Amazon kids is a great kids app.
I mean Amazon it's kids, it says it right there.
And then IMDB TV is a must have.
IMDB TV, is the commercial supported branch of prime video.
So you don't have to pay anything,
you might already get Amazon prime anyway.
But IMDB TV is another one
of those Netflix imitators kind of a thing.
So I definitely recommend that.
I just didn't mention it
because it comes on the stick already.
So you didn't even have to download it.
Anyway that being said,
hope this helps you in your quest for free content,
saving some money when you're cutting that cord.
If it did, make sure you give this video a like.
Don't forget to subscribe for more stuff like this,
and if you have any requests,
anything you want me to cover
or any apps that you enjoy on your FireStick
that are free to use,
then hit the comments below.
Lemme know, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions,
your tips, your advice, they'll be great.
Thanks for watching everybody,
I will see you next time.