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My old kindle has been dying slowly over the past 2 months. My [ex] g/f gave me a new Kindle Fire HD 8 Plus for Christmas in 2020. I stashed it away, never fired it up and registered it. Now that the old kindle HD8 (6th Gen) [2017] is dying after taking a beating day in, day out ... I dug up the "new" kindle.

I have had it with Kindle's Silk browser. Lots of issues, especially when playing Rumble videos, even on the new kindle. Amazon doesn't offer any alternatives to Silk browser in the Amazon App store. If I want a better browser, I needed to install Google Play on the kindle and download one of their browser offerings. That requires downloading .APK files and executing them, then restarting the kindle. After doing the research, I successfully chose the correct .APK files and installed Google Play, then I downloaded the Brave browser... Success!!!

Unfortunately the Kindle Fire 8HD Plus (10th Gen) has a 64bit ARM but executes in 32bit. That made a difference in one 64bit ARM.APK file. I had to dig to find that tidbit when the 64bit .APK failed to load. I did a little more research and downloaded the correct 32bit .APK and it executed flawlessly.

This may have been childs play for you IT gurus and android phone users ... I've never worked with .APK files before. Far less intimidating than I thought it might be. I feel like I've accomplished something this afternoon.

Next challenge, importing my bookmarks from Silk.

My old kindle has been dying slowly over the past 2 months. My [ex] g/f gave me a new Kindle Fire HD 8 Plus for Christmas in 2020. I stashed it away, never fired it up and registered it. Now that the old kindle HD8 (6th Gen) [2017] is dying after taking a beating day in, day out ... I dug up the "new" kindle. I have had it with Kindle's Silk browser. Lots of issues, especially when playing Rumble videos, even on the new kindle. Amazon doesn't offer any alternatives to Silk browser in the Amazon App store. If I want a better browser, I needed to install Google Play on the kindle and download one of their browser offerings. That requires downloading .APK files and executing them, then restarting the kindle. After doing the research, I successfully chose the correct .APK files and installed Google Play, then I downloaded the Brave browser... Success!!! Unfortunately the Kindle Fire 8HD Plus (10th Gen) has a 64bit ARM but executes in 32bit. That made a difference in one 64bit ARM.APK file. I had to dig to find that tidbit when the 64bit .APK failed to load. I did a little more research and downloaded the correct 32bit .APK and it executed flawlessly. This may have been childs play for you IT gurus and android phone users ... I've never worked with .APK files before. Far less intimidating than I thought it might be. I feel like I've accomplished something this afternoon. Next challenge, importing my bookmarks from Silk.

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[–] • 1 pt

https://xdaforums.com/t/windows-linux-tool-fire-toolbox-v39-1.3889604/

Get Fire Toolbox. You can make the tablet do anything for the most part.

[–] • 0 pt

Sounds like a handy app to have. I'm not sure exactly what's in it, I'll have to read through it to better understand it. Is this more for developers or debugging for the average user? Thanks for the link!

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

I've been using it for a few years. It makes life easier to manage the tablet.

Also, you can install different versions alongside each other. After awhile, older tablets are dropped from newer versions so if you have a tablet from 5+ years ago, you'll need the earlier version that supports it.