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Fire Toolbox is an unofficial tool that lets you change the behavior of Amazon Fire tablets. Among other things you can use it to add or remove apps, install a custom launcher to use instead of the default Amazon home screen, and install the Google Play Store and other Google apps and services.
This week Developer Datastream33 released version 32.3 of Fire Toolbox. Probably the biggest change? It adds support for Amazon’s newest tablet: the Amazon Fire HD 10 (2023) tablet that began shipping a few weeks ago.
With this update, you should be able to install Fire Toolbox on a Windows or Linux computer, connect just about any recent Fire tablet (including the 13th-gen Fire HD 10) to your PC with a USB cable, and install the Google Play Store (or make other changes) with a couple of mouse clicks.
Keep in mind that Amazon’s tablets aren’t designed to run Google apps and services, so some features may not work as expected. And there’s always a chance that Amazon could roll out over-the-air software updates that undo some of the changes you implement with Fire Toolbox.
It’s still a pretty useful utility for anyone looking to make Amazon’s tablets a little more useful though. While the Fire OS software that runs on Amazon’s tablets is based on Android, it comes with Amazon’s app store, web browser, and other apps and features tight integration with Amazon’s Kindle, Prime Video, and Music services, among other things. But there are millions of Android apps that aren’t available in Amazon’s store, and installing the Google Play Store makes it possible to run many of them on an Amazon tablet.
Other changes in Fire Toolbox v32.3 include an improved updater feature that should do a better job of letting you know if an update is available when you run Fire Toolbox, notification improvements, and improved support for apps that use Google Play Services on Fire tablets running Fire OS 8 that disables battery optimizations for Play Services to allow them to keep running in the background.
I’m looking for a replacement to my old LG tablet that also was a 10′ screen, it ran the Jellybeans release of Android, I used it among other things to ssh into my servers when I was out on the road, although it wasn’t a telephone by design, it had a speaker and microphone, so installed skype and it’s instantly a phone, had a radio in it that is compatible with Verizon, but it’s 13 years old now and the touch sensitive screen became less sensitive to the point where I finally broke it. Now I see there is a toolkit for the Fire HD 10 that would allow installation of play store, but since this is not build for it, it may not be compatible for apps. I’m wondering if it is a phablet, that is does phone tablet or tablet only and if it is tablet can it connect to the wireless phone networks and use skype?
I wish this device, or some other recent inexpensive tablet, had USB Alt Mode.