Blue Light on Firestick Remote – What Does It Mean?! (Easy Fix!)
Firestick remotes come voice-activated these days and more features usually mean more problems. If you’re seeing a flashing blue light on your Firestick remote, I have an easy fix for you.
Blue light on Firestick remote
A blue light on your Firestick remote means that the microphone button was pushed, activating Alexa voice assistant. Your remote is now actively listening for a voice command. To turn it off take the batteries out of the remote, unplug your Firestick and wait 20 seconds before plugging it back in.
Amazon Firestick with Alexa Voice Remote
Firestick remotes now come with a built-in microphone and are fully integrated with Alexa voice assistant, right out of the box.
This adds a ton of additional functionality to your Firestick device, namely the ability to directly control your TV with voice commands.
The days of endlessly clicking through the home screen searching for the show/movie you want to watch, or taking 2 minutes to type in the title, letter by letter, are over.
Simply hold down the microphone button on the remote and search for your show/movie by speaking the title out loud.
You can even ask the Firestick remote for the weather, or the score of your favorite sports team’s latest game.
A Blue Light Means Alexa is Listening
If you own any other Alexa devices, you know that a blue light serves as an indicator that the device’s wake word has been used and that it is now “listening” for a command.
For example, when you say “Hey Alexa” to the Amazon Echo, a ring of blue light appears, which tells you that the Echo is now listening to you.
In the case of your Amazon Firestick remote, it doesn’t use a wake word to become active but instead starts “listening” whenever you hold the microphone button down.
Hitting the microphone button will cause this familiar blue light to flash and should indicate to you that your remote is now ready for a voice command.
How to shut off the blinking blue light
If the blue light on your Firestick remote is blinking, follow these exact steps to shut it off:
1. Remove the batteries from your remote
2. Disconnect the Firestick device from the TV AND the power cable
3. Wait about 20 seconds before reconnecting the Firestick
4. Wait until the device has fully booted up and then re-insert the remote batteries
5. Press the home button for 10 seconds
The advice above is the exact advice that Amazon provides when first dealing with a remote that has a constant flashing blue light.
Restart the Device
If that advice fails, you can also try restarting the device.
To do so, you’ll need to hold down the Play/Pause button and the Select button simultaneously for about 5 seconds.
This should reset it.
Power Cycle the Fire Stick
At this point, if the device still has a blinking blue light, you should power cycle the fire stick.
1. Unplug the power adaptor directly from the Firestick and leave it unplugged for at least a full minute.
2. After the minute passes go ahead and plug it back in.
If you’re still having the same issue, I would follow all of these steps again. In almost every case the light will eventually turn off.
Still stuck
In the rare event that you still just can’t get that blue light to go away, you should take a look at this article: How to fix a Firestick remote that won’t work.
This post goes into a lot more detail and if you try each of the steps exactly as they are explained, in order, you should absolutely be able to get your remote working again.
Ultimately it may require you to download the Amazon Fire TV app and then unpair and repair your remote but only take that step if all others fail.
Firestick Remote Voice Commands
There are a ton of different voice commands you can use to control your TV with the Firestick remote.
Since they are already well documented, I won’t repeat all of them, but here are a few of my favorites.
- “Turn TV ON/OFF”
- “Rewind 2 minutes”
- “Go to my video library”
- “Show me new movies”
- “Add this to my watchlist”
- “Show me the weather”
Having Alexa integrated into Fire TV is simply a game changer.
I now use voice commands about 90% of the time now when I interact with my TV – it’s just flat-out easier than using the remote manually.
(As a bonus, check out these 21 Firestick tips from PC mag)
Conclusion
Amazon Firestick remotes now come with Alexa built-in. This allows you to use voice commands to control your TV instead of having to type in the show/movie title, letter-by-letter.
To activate Alexa on the remote, all you have to do is press and hold the microphone button. This should cause the remote to flash blue.
The blue light just means that the remote is actively listening to you, waiting for a voice command.
Occasionally this blue light gets stuck and won’t go away.
To fix the remote and turn off this flashing blue light, you can try taking the remote batteries out, unplugging the Firestick, and resetting the device.
As a last resort, you can download the Amazon Fire TV app and unpair, and then repair your remote.
