Adding YouTube Kids App to an Older Gen Amazon Fire 8 Tablet
My son has a fondness for watching the occasional video on YouTube Kids on our phones. We have an old (2017) Fire 8 tablet laying around that we added a FreeTime/Kids profile to for him. The other day he asked if we could add YouTube Kids for him. I assumed it would be as simple as downloading it from the Amazon AppStore, so I said “Sure, no problem. Let me take a look at it.” Three days later, I finally got it added. Needless to say it wasn’t as simple as I expected. And one of my quirks is not being able to let something go once I’ve promised it.
There are several tutorials out there, so it wasn’t ultimately a huge deal. The problem was piecing together what parts worked for me and what didn’t. So, if there are already tutorials, why bother writing this? Docendo discimus — By teaching, we learn. This was my first foray into some of these topics (FTP Servers, sideloading apps on an Amazon device), so I wanted to make note of it, mostly for myself.
The short story is…YouTube Kids isn’t available through Amazon, and you can’t really share sideloaded apps with a kids profile on a Fire tablet.
- I downloaded some apps (GoToApp, and File Manager) from the Amazon AppStore, then added them to the kids profile.
- I created a Raspberry Pi FTP server where I added the 4 Google Play Store APKs (Account Manager, Services Framework, Play Services, and Play Store) and the YouTube Kids App APK.
- Using File Manager in the kids profile, I connected to my FTP server and downloaded all the APKs. I ran the Play Store APKs in the order above, then ran the YT Kids APK. Without the Play Store APKs in there the YT Kids app wouldn’t run for me. It would start and immediately shut down.
- Because it’s sideloaded, the YouTube Kids won’t show up on the tablet by itself, but it will show under GoToApp.
The long version
This will involve a few bits of hardware, including:
- Raspberry Pi (whatever flavor you want, I used a RPi Zero W)
- SD Card, USB Hubs, Keyboard, Mouse, HDMI cables, power cables, whatever you need for running your Raspberry Pi
- Amazon Fire tablet
The first step is to setup the FTP server. I won’t rewrite that here, since the tutorial given over at Raspberry Pi Spy worked fine. This was my first time setting up a RPi FTP server and these instructions worked perfectly.
Once the FTP server was up and running, I connected to it using WinSCP on my PC. You should be able to download the APKs and copy them to the FTP server folder directly on the Raspberry PI, but since I was new to this I wanted to play around a little.
Download the following APKs from APKMirror.com
and add those APKs to the FTP server.
On the Fire (mine is an Amazon Fire 8 2017 version) under the parent profile, download File Manager by Rhythm Software and GoToApp Full by Selegic Inc. GoToApp is a paid app, but it’s only $1.99 and I needed it to make it easy for my kid to run YT Kids by himself. Then share both of these apps to the child profile.
Switch to the child profile to start copying and installing the APKs.
Run File Manager, click the dots in the lower right, and select “network”
Then, select “create” in the upper left, click on “FTP/FTPS/SFTP”, and then click “FTP”
Add your FTP info — IP address, port, username, and password.
Connect to the FTP server you just added, and navigate to where you put the files. Click “Multi” at the top to select multiple files, then select the 4 Google Play Store APKs and the YouTube Kids APK. Then click “Copy” at the top
Then click “home” at the top, and paste the APKs where you want them. I put them in the “Download” folder.
Once the APKs are copied off of the FTP server and onto the device, begin running and installing them. I seem to remember from doing something similar in the past that they have to be installed in a certain order. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I did them in the order listed up above (Account Manager, Services Framework, Play Services, Play Store, then finally the YouTube Kids APK).
Sideloaded apps won’t show up in the kids profile. This is where GoToApp comes into play. Open GoToApp, and YouTube Kids should be in there. You’ll always have to go into GoToApp first to get to YouTube Kids. The Google Play store will also be in there, so if you have a curious kid, you might want to remove that from GoToApp, so they can’t see it. I actually removed everything except for YouTube Kids from GoToApp just to make it easier.