How To Mirror an Android Phone With the Amazon Fire Stick

For the last ten years, streaming movies and television shows has gone from a niche, nerdy way to watch your favorite entertainment to the way most people spend their free time. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services have become giants, with their original programming often going on to win major awards like Emmys and even Oscars. The content stream isn’t slowing down, either, with major new streaming services from Disney and Warner Bros. released in 2019 and 2020. So, with the streaming wars heating up, there’s never been a better time to jump into the world of Amazon Fire TV, and more specifically, the low-cost $40 Amazon Fire TV Stick

One lesser-known but powerful feature of the Amazon Fire TV Stick is the ability to mirror a smartphone or tablet screen to your TV screen. This lets you do things like play movies or TV shows from your phone, or have a big-screen video chat, or play games with a giant display. You can mirror the display only, or the display plus the audio. Setting up mirroring is fairly easy, but in this article I will walk you through the entire process.

Activate Mirroring on Your Fire TV

The first step in the process is to activate mirroring on your Fire TV Stick.

Go to your Fire TV menu, hit the Home button, and move right until you reach Settings. Navigate to Display & Sounds, then choose Enable Display Mirroring.

Quick Start Mirroring

Your Amazon Fire Stick also gives you a quick start option for mirroring. Hold down the Home button on the Fire Stick remote and choose Mirroring. After you’ve made the selection, connect your Android device to Fire TV. If you wish to stop mirroring, just press any button on the remote.

Once mirroring has been activated, your Fire TV Stick will go into a receptive mode where it is awaiting input from the Android device. It will display a screen like this one:

Your Fire TV Stick will remain in this receptive mode until you press a button on the remote.

Activate Mirroring on Your Phone or Tablet

The next step is to enable Miracast on your phone or tablet. In order to mirror your device to the Fire TV Stick, the device will need to support Miracast. If you have a tablet, phone, or even a desktop computer made after 2012 or so, it should support Miracast natively. Miracast is a wireless protocol that allows sharing of audio and video information between WiFi-enabled devices. However, because every phone maker tends to fork its own versions of the Android operating system, this functionality doesn’t always have the same name on every phone.

Open your device’s settings page and search for one of the following phrases:

• Miracast
• Screen mirroring
• AllShareCast
• Cast screen
• Wireless display
• Wireless mirroring
• Quick Connect
• Smart View
• Screen Sharing

If you aren’t able to find this functionality, then you might check with WiFi Alliance’s device list to make sure that your phone has it. Once you’ve found the settings page for the screen mirroring functionality, enable the service and your Fire TV Stick should begin mirroring whatever is on your Android device’s screen.

If your phone has a version of Android prior to 4.2, then it probably doesn’t support Miracast natively. You’re not out of luck, however; there are apps for your Fire TV Stick that will let you mirror from your device.

Mirroring via Third-Party Apps

There are third-party apps that will allow you to mirror from devices that don’t support Miracast. There are a number of apps to choose from, but for this article I will show you how to work with AllCast, as it is one of the most popular and reliable apps and supports many devices.

• Download the AllCast App on Fire TV

From the Home screen, move left to the search bar and use the onscreen keyboard to enter “Allcast”. Find the AllCast app and install it on your device.

• Install the AllCast App on Your Android Device

Search the Play Store for the AllCast app and install it on your device.

• Choose the Media You Want to Mirror

Launch AllCast on your device and on your Fire TV Stick, and it will give you the option to choose the media that you wish to mirror with your Fire TV Stick. You will then have full control over the playback options.

Conclusion

Mirroring the content of your Android device is quite easy, even if your device isn’t Miracast compatible. In addition to the built-in support for Miracast, third-party apps like AllCast will let you cast to your Fire TV Stick from almost any device.