Sideload Apps from Phone or Tablet to Nvidia Shield TV

Tutorial: From Android Phone or Tablet to Android TV box – Sideload it!

Sideload Apps from Phone or Tablet to Shield Tv
Step 1 - Enable Developer options on your Shield TV

If you already have Developer Options enabled on your Shield, skip to Step 2 below

1: On your Nvidia Shield TV go to Settings->Device Preferences->About and scroll all the way down to Build

Settings-Build
Click “Build” 8 times

2: Click on Build 7 times. (after about 4 times, you’ll start to see a countdown message) Then you’ll see a “You are now a developer” message.

Developer
“You are now a developer”

3: Click the Back button on your remote to go back to Device Preferences and scroll all the way down to { } Developer options and click into there

Select Developer Options
Go into Developer Options

4: Scroll down to the Debugging section and click enable Network debugging

Enable Network Debugging

Enabled! Note your Shield’s LAN IP address you may need it in the next step. Yours will be different to what you see here.

Shield’s LAN address – Yours WILL be different!

Step 1 done!

Now, go to your Android phone or tablet

Step 2 - Install & Setup Easy Fire Tools

5: On your Android phone or tablet, open Google Play Store and search for “Easy Fire Tools”

Search for “Easy Fire Tools”

6: Click Install

Install

7: Once installed, open the app and click the icon (second from right at the top

Click “scan for devices” icon

8: Your device should be listed with the LAN IP address you noted down earlier. Click on that to select.

9: Next, click on the icon top right to connect to the device and you’ll see a “connected to ….(xxx.xxx.xx.xxx)” message

NOTE: You might have to allow a connection on your target device – click “always” and “OK”

On your Shield click “Always allow” and OK

10: Select the app you want to install (in this example case I selected “ATV Launcher”) and clcik “Yes”

11: Once installed, you see a “Operation successful” message

Operation successful

NOTE: You can also install apks that you have downloaded (to your phone) on to your Shield too.

12: Click on “Downloads” and “Allow” access when asked…

Click “Downloads” and “Allow”

13: As before, select the apk you want to install on your Shield and install as before – here I select the Weather apk

14: As before, you will see an “Operation successful” message.

Click the green icon, top right to disconnect.

Done

Associated YouTube video

Browser Plugin for Downloader APK

Android TV OS, Nvidia Shield TV, TiVo Stream 4k, Xiaomi MiBox, MeCool KM1, KM3 & KM9</p> <p>

Sideload with the Downloader Browser plugin

Check out other Sideload articles and videos:

Ever since Google banned browsers from the Play Store and effectively stopping downloads of 3rd party apps (APKs), many users have come up with methods for getting round this restriction.

Here we look at the popular “Downloader” browser plugin method.

As usual we’ll be doing this on the Nvidia Shield TV, though the same method can be used in any other Android TV device (like the Tivo Stream 4k, Xiaomi Mi Box, MeCool KM3, KM1 and KM9 as well as the Amazon Fire Sticks). Throughout this tutorial you’ll see “On your Nvidia Shield” or “on your Shield”, substitute “Nvidia Shield” for your device…

Let’s Get Stuck In!

On your Nvidia Shield go to the Google Play Store and search for “Downloader”.

You’ll probably see it listed as soon as you put in the first two letters! Select “Downloader by Troypoint”

Click “Install”

Once downloaded and installed, click “Open”

Click on “Allow” (Allows Downloader access to photos, media etc on your Shield)

The next message you see, will say (among other things) “Browser: Load and browse webpages”. Well, actually you can’t, not just yet…. we need to something else… Click “OK” to that.

If you click on the “Browser” section, you’ll see that you CAN’T browse webpages ….. just yet

So, click back to the “Home” section of the app, and click into the URL address area


GO TO DEVICE SETTINGS AND GIVE DOWNLOADER PERMISSION TO DOWNLOAD FROM UNKNOWN SOURCES


type in “https://tinyurl.co/browserok” (no commas” “) and click “Go”

The plugin will be downloaded and you may see this screen. If so, click “Install”

You’ll be asked if you wish to install the Downloader Browser Plugin. Click “Install”

Once installed, click “Done”

You can now test to confirm that the browser now works. Click on the browser section on the left and you will now see a browser start page, qhich is set to Google by default

Click into the address bar at the top and test a url like, for example, WOTtime.net (hint you don’t neccesarily need to put in “https://”)

To use the browser in full screen mode, click over to the hamburger menu (top right) and select “Fullscreen Mode (Hold select 🔘 button to exit)”

Bang! Full screen browsing. Use the D-Pad of your remote, a controller, or mouse and keyboard to navigate. (You’ll see the “cursor” in this browser is a red circle)

Bingo! Done!