Having a screensaver on an Amazon Fire TV or Fire TV Stick is a good way to avoid possible display burn-in. The problem is that the device may not let you continue from where you left off once the screensaver kicks in. If you find yourself regularly having to jump back to the Home menu and restart your streaming app to continue, here are some workarounds.
Turn Off the Screensaver
The simplest way to avoid this problem on your Amazon Fire TV or Fire TV Stick is to prevent or delay the screensaver (sometimes referred to as Ambient Experience) from starting up in the first place.
Open “Settings” (look for a gear-shaped icon) and select “Display & Sounds,” then select “Ambient Experience.”
Select “Ambient Experience (On)” from the top of the menu to set it to “Ambient Experience (Off).”
Depending on your setup, such as using a Fire TV Stick rather than a Fire TV, you may still find your screen turning blank. If that happens, press the “Back” button on the remote to return to the streaming app and then select “Continue” (this terminology may differ based on the app being used) to jump back in.
Delay the Screensaver
If you don’t want to turn off the screensaver (or Ambient Experience) entirely, you can extend the amount of time it takes to turn it on instead.
From the Home screen, select “Settings” and then choose “Display & Sounds.”
Select “Ambient Experience” and choose “Ambient preferences,” then select “Advanced Settings” from the bottom.
Choose “Ambient Experience Start” and select a longer timeframe (for example, 15 minutes).
If your Fire TV device doesn’t use Ambient Experience, the steps are slightly different, but you can still choose to either turn off the screensaver entirely or delay its start up time.
Select Settings > Display & Sounds > Screen Saver > Start Time > Never to prevent the screensaver from turning on.
Alternatively, choose one of the time options (for example, 15 minutes) so that the screensaver waits longer before starting up.
Use the Recents Button
If you really don’t want to turn off the screensaver, but still find the process of resuming a stream once it kicks in to be annoying, there’s one other thing that may help:
After exiting the screensaver (or Ambient Experience), locate and press the “Recents” button (the icon looks like two overlapping squares) on the Fire TV device’s remote. This will pull up a list of recently-used apps.
Select the app you were just using, which should be highlighted by default, but you can do it manually.
The app will reopen with the media you were watching selected. Choose “Continue” to pick up where you left off. Be aware that some apps may use different terms, though.
Something to keep in mind if you’re using a Fire TV Stick is that your TV may have its own screensaver or power-saving settings that work independently of the streaming device. If you’ve turned off the Fire TV Stick’s screensaver or Ambient Experience and still find that the screen is going blank due to inactivity, you may need to change settings on your TV as well. That said, your TV going into something like a Sleep or Power-Save mode should not affect your ability to resume playback since it’s not happening on the Fire TV device itself.
