How to Stop Fire Stick Buffering: 14 Easy Fixes

There are few things more frustrating than getting ready for a streaming session only to be stuck watching the loading circle rotate on repeat. A full cache, slow internet connection, outdated software, excessive heat, and other issues can all result in your Fire Stick buffering a lot.

In this blog, we’ll give you a list of problems that might be causing your Fire Stick to buffer and show you how to fix them so that you can enjoy seamless streaming no matter where or when you’re watching.

Why Does My Fire Stick Keep Buffering?

When you stream with your Fire Stick, it downloads video and audio content into a part of its onboard memory known as a buffer. 

Ideally, your Fire Stick should download and store the content in the buffer faster than it’s playing on your screen. When this doesn’t happen, you’ll see the buffering icon on your screen. Your Fire Stick will keep buffering until it has enough content in its memory to resume playback. 

There are a few reasons why you might be seeing the loading circle. Here are some of the issues that could result in your Fire Stick buffering too much for an enjoyable viewing experience:

• • Slow internet connection: Full HD streaming requires at least a 5 Mbps connection; anything below that will likely lead to Fire Stick buffering. A weak Wi-Fi signal, ISP throttling, and having many devices connected to your network can all slow your speeds.
  • Congested streaming servers: You may find that you experience more buffering during peak times. This might be because your streaming service is getting more traffic than it can handle, slowing data transmission and causing interruptions.
  • Outdated operating system: Amazon regularly releases updates to fix bugs and improve Fire Stick performance. You likely won’t be able to fix your Fire Stick buffering issues if you haven’t updated your device in a while.
  • Too many apps running on your Fire Stick: A Fire Stick is not exactly a powerhouse. Too many apps running in the background can slow down processing speed, which can lead to buffering even if you have a fast connection.
  • Full cache: Apps on your Fire Stick keep a temporary store of data in their cache, making it faster to access to reduce load times. However, the opposite happens when apps are storing too much data on your device.
  • Malware infestation: Malicious programs on your Fire Stick will overconsume system resources. This can do everything from hampering your device’s processing abilities to disrupting internet connectivity.
  • Fire Stick overheating: Prolonged use, poor ventilation, being placed near other heat-generating devices or in direct sunlight, and being connected directly to your TV instead of a power adapter can all cause overheating that leads to Fire Stick buffering.

How to Stop Fire Stick Buffering: 14 Step-by-Step Solutions

Just like there are multiple reasons why you might be experiencing long load times, there are multiple potential solves for your problem. Below is a step-by-step guide for how to stop buffering on your Fire Stick. Try each fix sequentially until you fix the issue.

1. Restart Your Fire Stick

Sometimes, the simplest solution is the most effective. Restarting your Firestick will clear its temporary memory and close background apps, both of which can resolve some glitches that cause buffering. 

To restart your Fire Stick, you can switch off the TV that it’s connected to, unplug your Fire Stick from the power source it’s connected to, and wait around 10 seconds before you plug it back in. 

Alternatively, head to your Fire TV Stick Settings menu, select My Fire TV, and scroll down to select Restart. 

2. Keep Your Fire Stick Cool

Overheating can slow down its performance and make your Fire Stick freeze or buffer. Ensure it isn’t in direct sunlight and that it has enough space around it so that your other devices aren’t transferring heat to it and it can cool off.

If you’ve tried everything and your Fire Stick is still heating up, it might unfortunately be time to buy a new one.

3. Improve Your Connection Speed

A slow internet connection is one of the most common reasons for Fire Stick buffering. As we’ve mentioned, you typically need a download speed of at least 5 Mbps to stream in HD. Although, 10 Mbps is recommended for seamless streaming in high quality.

Here’s how to verify your internet connection speed:

• • First, check that your chosen internet package provides you with a download speed of 5 Mbps or more. 
  • Next, run a few internet speed tests throughout the day to see your download speed when you’re performing different tasks online.

If you notice your internet slows significantly when you’re streaming during peak hours (usually from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.) or for an extended period, this is likely because your ISP is throttling your speeds. Internet service providers will often limit your connection speed to save resources if they detect that you’re doing a lot of streaming or downloading.

The best Fire Stick buffering fix here is to use CyberGhost VPN. By routing your traffic through an encrypted VPN tunnel, CyberGhost hides your activity from your ISP. When your provider can’t see what you’re doing, it can’t enforce content-based throttling.

Installing CyberGhost VPN on your Fire Stick is easy:

1. Get CyberGhost VPN and download the app onto your Fire Stick.
2. Log in to your account and connect to a streaming-optimized server.
3. Start streaming your favorite content.

Once you’re connected to CyberGhost VPN, your ISP won’t be able to see that you’re streaming, helping you avoid buffering during your streaming session. Our VPN also comes with a long list of advanced features aimed at preserving your privacy and connection speeds against outside interference.

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4. Boost Your Signal Strength

When connection speed is above 5 Mbps and you’re not being thwarted by ISP throttling, it might be the case that your Wi-Fi signal isn’t strong enough for your Fire Stick to pick up. This could happen for a number of reasons, but your router and your Fire Stick being far away from one another or having a really thick wall between them are two common causes. 

Before moving forward with these fixes, you’ll want to verify whether your Wi-Fi strength is the problem. Here’s how:

1. Go to Settings and select Network. 
2. Highlight the Wi-Fi network you’re connected to and press the Play/Pause button.
3. Your Signal Strength will be displayed on the right-hand side. This should be Very Good.

If the result from the test isn’t Very Good, there are a few options to improve the connection between your router and your Fire Stick:

• • Move your devices closer together: Place your router in the same room where you use your Fire Stick to stream content.
  • Use an ethernet cable: Connect your Fire Stick directly to your router with an ethernet cable. This will eliminate Wi-Fi-related issues and give you the most stable connection.
  • Get a Wi-Fi extender: When it’s not possible to have your router and Fire Stick in the same room or you don’t want to run a cable through your home, you could use a Wi-Fi extender to boost the signal from your router.

5. Disconnect Other Devices From Your Network

Having a load of devices connected to your network could be another reason why your Fire Stick keeps buffering even if you’re using a VPN to stop ISP throttling and your Wi-Fi signal is good.

The simplest way to kick devices off of your network is by changing your Wi-Fi password. This will disconnect all devices and restore your control over your Wi-Fi. Here’s how to change your security key:

1. Open your router settings by entering its IP address into your internet browser’s search bar. (You can usually get your router IP address from the sticker on the underside of the device.)
2. Log in with your username and password, which you’ll also likely find on your router’s label.
3. Find the settings and then the field labeled “Wi-Fi Password,” “Security Key,” or similar.
4. Enter a new, strong password and click save.

Alternatively, you can check what devices are using your internet connection and disconnect them by logging in to your router:

1. Enter your router’s IP address into your browser’s address bar.
2. Log in with your credentials.
3. Navigate to the section showing the list of connected devices. This will usually be under “Device List,” “Connected Devices,” “Wireless Clients,” or similar.
4. Select the device that you want to remove and look for options like “Disconnect,” “Remove,” or “Block”. These will usually appear when you highlight or right click on the device.

Removing unwanted or unknown devices from your router will free up some bandwidth and reduce the likelihood that you’ll be stuck dealing with Fire Stick buffering the next time you want to stream.

6. Configure Your Router

While you’re busy with your router, you can also optimize its settings to enhance the quality of your stream and reduce buffering. Before you begin, be sure to disconnect your Fire Stick from the router. Then follow these steps:

1. Input your router’s IP address into your web browser’s address bar.
2. Enter your credentials to log in.
3. Find and enable the Quality of Service (QoS) settings for your Fire Stick.
4. If available and supported by your Fire Stick, switch to the 5GHz band.
5. Save the changes and restart your router.

Once you’ve turned on QoS to prioritize traffic from your Fire Stick and restarted your router, you can reconnect your Firestick to your Wi-Fi network. This should give you better performance.

7. Connect to a Different Network

Some networks block streaming. Although this would usually prevent you from accessing streaming sites entirely, it could also be the reason why your Fire Stick stream is buffering when it’s connected to a TV at a hotel, office, or classroom.

To solve this issue, you’ll need to connect to a different network. There are a few options here:

• • Use a Wi-Fi hotspot on another device: Create a Wi-Fi hotspot with your mobile device and connect your Fire Stick to that network. Keep in mind, though, that streaming on mobile could exhaust your data quickly.
  • Connect via a VPN: Download CyberGhost VPN onto your Fire Stick and connect to a streaming-optimized server. This will encrypt your connection, making it nearly impossible for your network administrator to detect that you’re streaming.

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8. Update Your Fire Stick OS

Keeping your Fire Stick OS up to date gives it the best chance of working smoothly. Automatic updates should be on by default, but you can also start one manually. Here’s how:

1. Head to Settings and scroll to My Fire TV. 
2. Select About and find Install Update to check if an update is available.
3. Click Install Update and follow any on-screen prompts to complete the process.

Updating your Fire Stick OS should solve almost all software issues. This will also keep your Fire Stick’s security up-to-date, preventing malware from eating up the device’s system resources. 

9. Stop or Uninstall Apps

You might find that your Fire Stick is buffering all the time if you have too many apps running in the background. This is because apps take up connection bandwidth and processing power. 

To solve this issue:

1. Go to Settings on your Fire Stick and click on Applications.
2. Select Manage Installed Applications.
3. Scroll through the list of apps, clicking on the ones you don’t need and selecting Force stop from the list of options that pops up.

It’s likely that you have at least a few apps on your Fire TV Stick that you’ve either never used or just used once or twice. If that’s the case, it’s best to uninstall the app instead.

10. Update Your Apps

Like the OS, your Fire Stick should automatically update the apps installed on it. To double-check that everything is up to date, you can follow these steps:

1. Find the Apps section on your Home Screen.
2. Select App Store.
3. Scroll across to the Updates tab to see all available app updates.
4. Either select Update All or manually select the apps you want to update.

To avoid having to do manual updates, it’s best to turn automatic updates on. To do this, go to Settings, Applications, and App Store. Scroll to find Automatic Updates and toggle the setting to ‘on’.

If you have a jailbroken Fire Stick with buffering issues on a sideloaded app, go to the app’s website to download the latest version. If you already have the updated version and it doesn’t give you smooth video streaming, it just might be a low-quality app or streaming service.  

11. Clear App Cache

When there’s a particular app that tends to freeze your device, the Fire Stick buffering fix you’ll want to try is clearing the app cache. Keep in mind that you’ll need to do this for each app that causes buffering issues.

When you use an app a lot, it keeps creating and storing temporary files on your Fire Stick. Deleting this data can speed things up and it’s really simple to do:

1. Go to Settings and select Applications.
2. Then click on Manage Installed Applications.
3. Select the app you want to clear the cache for. 
4. On the app’s details page, click on Clear cache. You can also choose Clear data, but this will erase all information associated with the app, including your settings and preferences.
5. A prompt will fill the screen asking you to confirm your choice. Click Confirm to continue.

It’s best to wait a minute or two after clearing the cache to reopen the app you cleared. This ensures that your actions have time to take effect.

12. Turn Off Data Monitoring 

Fire Stick’s data monitoring feature continually logs your usage to control the amount of data you use and improve your experience. 

To do this, certain processes need to run in the background, which can slow down performance and increase the likelihood of buffering. It may also restrict the flow of data to avoid exceeding certain transfer limits. 

Here’s how to turn off data monitoring on your Fire Stick:

1. Navigate to Settings.
2. Click on Preferences.
3. Scroll down and select Data Monitoring.
4. Turn data monitoring off.
5. Restart your Fire Stick.

A word of caution: Turning off data monitoring will make your Fire Stick use up more data. Think twice if you have data caps on your internet service. 

Although data monitoring can cause buffering issues with your Fire Stick, that shouldn’t be your only concern with this setting. Your usage information is shared with Amazon, which isn’t great for your privacy.

Turning off data monitoring and using CyberGhost VPN to encrypt your internet connection will help you to keep all of your data safe while you’re streaming your favorite content.

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13. Factory Reset Your Fire Stick

When none of the other solutions on this list have worked, it’s time to factory reset your Fire Stick. This will erase everything on the device and should solve every software-related problem, including some malware infestations. Be sure to back up your data and note the apps that you want to reinstall later. 

Follow these steps to factory reset your Fire Stick:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click on My Fire TV.
3. Select Reset to Factory Defaults.
4. Click Reset on the confirmation screen.

This is an extreme measure, but it should make your Fire Stick as good as new. 

14. Lower Your Video Quality

The last resort to fix Fire Stick buffering is lowering your video quality. This can reduce the amount of data that you use to stream, which can help to reduce the load on your internet connection and help you avoid buffering.

You’ll need to do this within the individual app settings for every streaming app that you use on your device, so the process will be slightly different for each one. You’ll usually find the video quality control nestled beneath “Playback Settings” or similar in the settings menu.

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Can I Improve the Video Quality of My Fire Stick?

It’s possible to improve the video quality on your Fire Stick by tweaking a few settings. If you haven’t already, you’ll need to turn off data monitoring. This will allow you to select your desired video quality without any interference due to the data limits set by your Fire Stick.

Once data monitoring is switched off, a new menu will appear:

1. Click on Set Video Quality.
2. Select Best from the three options to get the highest-quality stream.
3. Click the Home button to save your settings and return to our home screen.

It’s good to note here that setting your video quality to Best will increase the amount of data that you use, which could lead to you hitting your data cap or being throttled by your ISP.

Should I Use a VPN with My Fire Stick?

Anyone who prioritizes security and privacy – and wants unrestricted access to their usual streaming platforms when they’re traveling abroad – should use CyberGhost VPN with their Fire Stick.

CyberGhost VPN encrypts your internet connection to help you combat content-based ISP throttling and get around network blocks that may be slowing down your stream to give you smooth video and improve your Fire Stick streaming experience.

VPN encryption has the added bonus of keeping your data safe from hackers, censors, or anyone else who might want to monitor what you’re doing online. By making it harder for third parties to track your activity, CyberGhost VPN helps to improve your online anonymity and keep your streaming passwords safe.

With CyberGhost VPN, streaming with the Fire Stick while traveling is seamless. By masking your IP address, it can help you to access your usual streaming platforms and libraries even when you’re abroad so you’ll never need to miss out on your favorite content.

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Stop Fire Stick Buffering for Good

A slow connection is the most common cause of Fire Stick buffering. It could stem from something as innocuous as your router being too far away from your Fire Stick. Or it could be something more serious, like ISP throttling.

Getting your router closer to your Firestick might require a bit of redecorating, but avoiding ISP throttling is much simpler; all you need to do is get CyberGhost VPN.

CyberGhost VPN uses robust encryption protocols to secure your connection. This means that no one will be able to see what you’re doing when you’re online, so you won’t have to deal with buffering caused by content-based ISP throttling and streaming blocks on your work or school network.

It’s a fast VPN with a network of servers that ensure you can stream in the best quality, including in UHD when it’s available. With 10-Gbps servers in busy locations, you never have to worry about overcrowded servers slowing you down and leaving you to watch the buffering wheel.

CyberGhost VPN has a native app for the Amazon Fire TV Stick as well as streaming-optimized servers for all of the most popular platforms, including Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Disney+, and more. 

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