Amazon recently rolled out the New Fire TV Interface i.e. Fire OS 7 on their latest Fire TV sticks and many users have become especially frustrated with ads and Amazon recommended content.

For example, if I go to Settings, scroll and click on the My Fire TV tab, in the menu that opens, click About and then scroll down to Check for Updates. You will note on the right side of the page it’s telling you what version of the OS your Firestick is running, for me, it’s Fire OS 7. And now, if I go to the main homepage, you will see these are the video ads that appear if you scroll up to the large ad banner at the top of the Fire TV home screen.

Don’t fret, this is Smart DNS Proxy. And today we’ll show how to change the user interface in one of the settings below. Let’s begin.

1. Change Privacy Settings

If you bought a new Fire TV stick or got the recent update, you might have noticed a lot of interest-based ads, and video autoplay. Well, while the Firestick privacy settings are ‘ON’ by default, Amazon gives you an option to turn it off from the settings.

Go to the Firestick Settings from the home screen. Open Preferences, click Privacy Settings and you will see several options. Here, turn OFF the following options: Device Usage Data and Collect App Usage Data.

Also, just to be on the safe side, I’ll disable Interest-based Ads.

Now, press the back button again to go the Preferences menu and choose Data Monitoring. Click Data Monitoring again to turn this setting off.

Next, go back to the Preferences menu and select Featured Content. Turn off both Allow Video Autoplay and Allow Audio Autoplay. This will force auto-playing video ads, ads to just be a static photo slideshow.

 If you prefer, you can set only the Audio option to OFF if you want to see the ads play without any sound, but know that there will not be any subtitles in that scenario. Setting only the Video option to Off is the same as setting both of them to Off, since audio will not play without the video playing.

2. Change the Amazon Appstore settings

Now, that you have disabled auto-play video and interest-based ads, now it's time to disable few options in the Amazon app store settings such as making sure you don’t end up making in-app purchases accidentally or turn off Appstore notifications.

Open the Firestick Settings again on the Fire TV stick. Choose and then click the option Applications. Next, go ahead and open Appstore. Here you will see the following option:

Automatic Updates: Keep it ON. Do note, with this option only the apps you have installed from the Amazon Appstore will be automatically updated and not any third-party apps you might have sideloaded. So, it’s safe that way.

External Market Links: Certain apps have links that redirect you to the Amazon Appstore for the installation of other apps. I like to set it up as, Ask Before Opening (recommended).

In-App Purchases:  This is an important one if you have kids using Fire TV stick. Keep this option OFF. It will make sure you don’t end up making in-app purchases accidentally.

Manage My Subscriptions: you can skip this.

Notifications: it’s better if you turn this option OFF to avoid Appstore notifications when you’re watching TV or using an app.

3. Disable Notification from apps in Fire TV stick

Some notifications from Alexa or from third-party apps may interrupt you while watching TV with your family. Thankfully, Fire TV stick provides you an option to turn them off, let me show you how to disable them all or for selected third-party apps that have been sideloaded onto FireStick.

Open Firestick Settings, go to Preferences and click Notification Settings. If you want to disable notifications from all the apps, turn ON the option Do Not Interrupt. This will temporarily block all notifications from any Fire TV apps you use. You turn off the Do Not Interrupt later by selecting the menu option again and it will go off.

However, if you would like notifications disabled for specific apps, click App Notifications and choose the desired app. In case you find any unwanted app on the list, you can uninstall the app from Fire TV. Thus, you won’t ever have to deal with the app notifications or storage issues caused by it.

So, there you go, these were out top 3 Firestick settings you need to turn off immediately. Let us know what else do you like to disable in your Fire TV stick.

Hope this helps, and again, as always, thanks for reading and watching, and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified about new videos.

See you in the next one!