Adding Google to an Amazon Fire 7 Kids Tablet

I purchased an Amazon Fire HD 7 Kids Pro tablet for my son in the summer. The tablet has a lot of cool kids features and apps, a simplified interface and a rugged case. But the ecosystem is locked down to Amazon. This means no YouTube and a slew of other apps that my son was using on his old Nexus 5 that I installed AOKP on.

Fortunately, getting Google apps onto the tablet didn’t require anything too strenuous. I definitely found it simpler than setting up a custom ROM, but it still took some time, care and patience.

An Amazon Fire HD 7 Kids Pro tablet running YouTube, sitting beside toys

Almost Great

There were a few things that prevent this from being a really good tablet. The technical specs are what I expected: not great, but it’s a kids’ tablet. In many ways, it seems like an ideal product. There are just a few things that make it difficult to achieve that end.

Amazon App Store

Some of the apps that I downloaded for free in the Google Play Store cost money in the Amazon Store, but appeared to be exactly the same. That is, if the app was even available. Some of the apps appeared to phone home to the Amazon store before proceeding, sometimes failing abruptly.

Core apps are alright though, no major issues. The Prime Video app is pretty decent. The Silk web browser was surprisingly handy.

Google Apps

While there are a number of apps that are missing, the one that stands out is YouTube. And to get YouTube, you need to have access to the GooglePlay app.

Account Access

While the unique interface for accounts is handy, the core account appears to have access to Amazon. This is important because the kids interface can not be used with apps installed through the Google Play store. The kids interface requires that you install that app through the Amazon app store, and then give permission to the child account. This option isn’t available to apps installed through other means like Google Play or sideloading apk files.

Two Part Plan

There were two parts to getting this set up:

  1. Download, install and set up Google Play
    • This requires a Google account
    • Many apps are less money in Google Play compared to Amazon
  2. Disable access to Amazon apps
    • Amazon makes it way too easy to buy things
    • Kids like clicking on buttons
    • Disabling Amazon app store can impact apps installed through the store

Set Up GooglePlay

There are a number of excellent tutorials that are kept up to date. The ones from HowToGeek or AndroidPolice are pretty easy to follow, but there are many. These tutorials go into step-by-step details and link to the same file downloads on ApkMirror, which are kept up to make with compatible versions.

The instructions can be a bit intimidating at a glance but they are pretty simple.

  • In settings, enable unknown sources in Silk web browser
  • In settings, get the version number and generation of the tablet
  • In Silk browser, download 3 files specific to the tablet
  • In Silk browser, download 1 file universal to all devices
  • In Files app, install the files in the following order; take care not to open any of them until after restarting
    • com.google.gsf.login
    • com.google.android.gsf
    • com.google.android.gms
    • com.android.vending
  • restart the device
  • open and sign in to GooglePlay

Hiding Amazon Apps

Amazon is a company that makes shopping very easy. They also don’t provide any way to easily turn off this feature by device. The Amazon Kids app does this through its permission layer but that is no longer available. This means Amazon Shopping and Kindle are both available, which only invites disaster. I’ve had this happen once before with my Kindle. Maybe I’ll get around to reading Obama’s book some day. For now, it sits gathering digital dust on a digital shelf.

Hiding the individual Amazon apps requires running commands through the terminal, and is a bit more involved that downloading and installing files. However, the commands are simple and it doesn’t take much work to get up and running.

  • In settings, enable Developer Options
  • Install ADB (Android Debug Bridge) using AndroidStudio
  • Determine which apps to hide
  • Execute the commands in the terminal and watch icons disappear from the tablet

There are a few possible ways to get a list of the apps to hide. You can view the Apps under the list on the tablet to see the name. But if you are using the tablet in the same way, you are mostly interested in blocking the Amazon Shop, Kindle, Amazon Apps and the Silk web browser. The browser has pretty decent content filtering features but they apply to kids mode, which we’re no longer using.

Apps To Disable On Kids Tablet

This is by no means a comprehensive list but I found disabling these apps was sufficient to lock down the tablet.

com.amazon.kindle
com.goodreads.kindle
com.amazon.windowshop
com.amazon.tahoe
com.amazon.dee.app
com.amazon.ags.app
com.amazon.venezia
com.amazon.cloud9

Enable and disable Silk web browser

./adb shell pm enable com.amazon.cloud9
./adb shell pm disable-user com.amazon.cloud9

Enable and disable Amazon AppStore

It’s important to keep in mind that Amazon apps many phone home to the app store, so you could lose functionality if you intend on mixing Google and Amazon apps. In that case, you may need to keep the app store.

./adb shell pm enable com.amazon.venezia
./adb shell pm disable-user com.amazon.venezia

Conclusion

Adding Google Play and other Google services to the tablet isn’t a very difficult process. Taking it further and disabling Amazon apps probably wouldn’t be worthwhile for an adult accessing their own accounts. However, when sharing the device with a child or someone outside of the family, it might be best to keep some apps out of sight.