A new option to select your default browser has been added to the Fire TV’s settings menu with the new 5.2.6.9 and 6.2.6.0 software updates that are rolling out to all models. The new option, located at the bottom of the Preferences menu, allows you to change which browser is used when launching the YouTube shortcut app, without needing to clear the app’s data.
In order for the default browser option to appear, you need to have at least Silk or Firefox browser installed on your Fire TV, as well as the YouTube app. You also need to have launched the YouTube app and selected to have it remember your browser selection. Prior to this new default browser setting, the only way to change which browser was used to load YouTube was to clear the YouTube app’s data.
Unfortunately, the default browser setting seems to only apply to the YouTube app. It is not a system-wide setting, since all other apps that try to open a browser will still prompt you to select a browser, even if you’ve set a default browser using the Fire TV’s new setting. Worse, if you select to remember your browser selection on the Android system prompt seen above, you can potentially have two different “default” browsers. Since the new default browser setting is not explicitly labeled as a “YouTube” setting and it does not appear under the “Applications” setting menu, this will mean that it will be updated to be a system-wide setting in the future that all apps abide by.
