Once you’ve installed all four apps, it’s time to reboot your Fire tablet. Press the power button until the power menu appears, then tap Restart.
4. Sign in to your Google account
After your Fire tablet reboots, you should be able to open the Google Play Store, sign in to your Google Account, and start downloading apps. Again, not everything works, but there’s certainly more to choose from than what you can get in Amazon’s Appstore.
Advice and troubleshooting
If you want a more stock Android experience, you can install a custom launcher that will allow you to hide any Amazon apps you don’t need. I like Nova Launcher, but there are many others available.
Assuming you’re done installing APKs from unknown sources, it’s a good idea to go back and turn that option off. It’s inside Settings > Security and privacy. Turn off Apps from unknown sources option. This will prevent you from accidentally downloading malware.
If you encounter problems installing apps from the Play Store, try clearing the app’s data. Go to Settings > Apps and notifications > Manage all applications. Browse through that list and find the Play Store. Touch to edit settings. The first step is tapping Force Stop to turn off the Play Store. Then tap Storagethen Clear data (or Clear Storage, depending on which version of Fire OS you’re using). Once you’ve done that, restart your device and try signing in to the Play Store again.
If that doesn’t work, you may want to do a factory reset and start over. However, keep in mind that a factory reset will erase all your data and files, not just the Google Play Store, so make sure you have a good backup before attempting this.
Finally, for those who want to try to install LineageOS, the open source alternative to Android: I don’t recommend it. Fire devices don’t have unlockable bootloaders, and installing LineageOS is not for the faint of heart. Even if you pull it off, things rarely work 100 percent of the time, and you can still screw things up after installation. I built an older Fire HD 8 running LineageOS (I tried to update the bootloader inside LineageOS, which turned out to be a bug). Also, as far as I know, there is no version of LineageOS that fully supports Fire hardware. If you want to run LineageOS on a tablet, a Samsung tablet is probably the best option.
