[Fire TV General] TakeTheActive:
Hello Everyone,

It's difficult to know "Who's Who" on the internet, so here's some background:

I'm a retired Baby Boomer / Senior Citizen / Old Techie. I've been playing with computers since the early 80s - RCA COSMAC 1802 in Machine Code; Zilog Z80 in Assembler; CP/M (and Atari 400 & 800) before MS-DOS and Windows. My health sucks so I tend to buy 'New Toys' when I see them on sale but it may take months / years before I get a 'Round Tuit'. When I first retired, I was able to sit at my computer desk all day and code and 'play' (I'm a retired Programmer / Analyst); back in the days of Public Domain (80s & 90s), I dis-assembled the EEPROM on a Xerox 820-II and re-wrote the code to use a Quantum 2020, or 2040, instead of the Shugart 1004 HDD) but now that my heart is failing, I need to keep my legs elevated so I switched to a tablet on the couch.

I have 1 Firestick "Tank", 2 Firestick 4Ks "Mantis", 2 TiVo Stream 4Ks, a half dozen Fire HD8 2016s "Giza", a few Echo Dot 2s "Biscuit", yada, yada, yada - you get the picture. *BEFORE* I turn ANYTHING on, I research the 'damage' that UPDATEs can do to it. Thus, the "Tank", one "Mantis", four "Giza" are still "New-in-Box" - well, until a couple of days ago. I follow TechDoctorUK, TroyPoint (and Free Tech - for the jokes, you understand) on YouTube and it's always been my plan to BLOCK UPDATES and install the WOLF LAUNCHER on my Firesticks - until a couple of days ago when TechDoctorUK announced the latest 'News'. I followed up with GOOGLE and discovered @Finnzz on Reddit which led me here to XDA (Well, I was already here as a LURKER and for the Fire Toolbox for the Amazon Tablets...).

So, I've been reading. And reading.. And reading... While the internet is great for looking up information, it is also BAD for the 'forever' aspect of not deleting out-dated information. I let the first Firestick 4K update so I'll just consider it a 'goner' but I blocked the Firestick "Tank". I found Archived AFTVNEWS info (I visit the site daily) on the "Blocking Updates" and tried the two ADB PM commands - NG; blocking the five URLs in my router - NG; and finally blocking the five URLs in Pi-Hole on my Raspberry Pi 3B - YEA! What a PITA blocking updates and still getting to Registration - timing on the router is critical. So, now I have LAN access to my Firestick "Tank", I've allowed it access to the internet, I've side-loaded Wolf Launcher and Leanback Launcher (using either ADB or X-Plore) but I can't get either Launcher to be the 'Default'. (And, I can't get to the Appstore from the Amazon Launcher but can from the Wolf Launcher?!? But there's no Search?!?). I know that the Firestick "Tank" is old / out-dated but for my wife watching Discovery+ or Hulu or HDHomeRun in bed on an old Sylvania 17" LCD HDTV (sadly, she's in poor health too), it's fine - better than 'wasting' a Firestick 4K there.

Now, I *HATE* to post for help - I'm so OCD that I'll spend WEEKS researching with Google rather than post for help. If you search the internet for my User ID for the past two or so decades, *I'M* the one helping out and writing FAQs. But, with so much conflicting / incorrect / out-of-date information on this particular topic, I give up:

Can I block updates and default to the the Wolf Launcher on the Firestick "Tank"?

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Can I block updates and default to the the Wolf Launcher on the Firestick 4K "Mantis"?

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Can I block updates and default to the the Wolf Launcher on the TiVo Stream 4K?

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Can I block updates and default to the the Wolf Launcher on the Toshiba FireTV 4K (released Spring 2021)?

@SweenWolf ,

I got up to ~page 14 in this thread where, IIRC, folks started giving you a hard time about 'stealing code' and various other worthless BS. "Non-Technical" / "Non-Programmer" types have NO FRAKIN' IDEA of the personal sacrifices folks like us make in our endeavor to simply help out strangers. More, more, more but never THANK YOU! :mad:

Well, I may be a (semi) newbie here on XDA, but I'm saying THANK YOU @SweenWolf !(y) I may have first heard about your work on TechDoctorUK's YouTube Channel a few years ago, and I'm more of a LURKER than a poster unless I'm trying to help someone out, but I'm posting here (asking for guidance) today and wanted to be sure to THANK YOU for all of your work. Note that I'm NOT asking you personally for any help - you've done enough just with your code.

P.S. Oh yeah, almost forgot - what happened to launcher-manager-fos5-_1-0-6-apk.5281739 for Fire OS5 (all the LINKs are broken)?

NOTE to All: I typically post in "Walls of Text" and use formatting (bold, italic, color) to highlight specific areas of my post that I wish folks to "Pay More Attention" to... ;) Yes,it's 'different'...