This article shows you how to turn your Firestick into a Movie Downloader box.  And not just any movie downloader, but an automated Secure way to Start a new movie-library or add to an existing one.  We show you how to add the Fire Stick USB port you’ve been waiting for.

Then we show you how to Start your own Movie Library by moving the downloaded files to a “Media library” (storage) location and/or media server.

Streaming Note:  It’s unlawful to download copyrighted materials if you haven’t purchased the download!  Only download public domain movies, or make sure you have the copyright for whatever you’re downloading.

How to Turn Firestick into Movie Downloader & Add Fire Stick USB Port

Don’t worry – turning Firestick into a movie downloader box is super easy.  It only takes a few minutes.

ProTip:  The ads that pop up right after you select “Download” in Terrarium TV can be loud, so turn your Volume down before pressing “Download”.  The movie downloads are totally worth it!

In the steps below, I use a Firestick, a Chromebook, and an external hard drive (Western Digital brand).  But you can use just about any combination of device you want!  For example, you can use a Firestick, an Android phone, and a USB thumb drive (+ OTG adapter, $5 from Amazon).  Or you could use a Fire TV (the “Fire TV Box” one), a Macbook, and an SD card.  This setup is pretty cool because you can switch out pretty much any pieces.  We break it down into its pieces so you understand the whole process from A to Z.

Part A:  Install Terrarium TV on Firestick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mfPRHnLjzc

Or, install Terrarium TV by adding the free DroidAdmin app to your Firestick:

1.  To install Droid Admin on Firestick, just search for DroidAdmin from the Firestick home screen, using the “Search” icon in the top left corner.
2. Once DroidAdmin is installed, just Open it and enter this code:  38069272
3. In the resulting list of apps, find and select Terrarium TV.
4. Then Install Terrarium TV using the installer provided in the Download code.

Part B:  Install VPN on Firestick to Secure your Downloads & Hide IP Address

Why?  We don’t want anyone to know what we’re downloading.  It’s a simple matter of personal privacy.  Therefore, we install the free VPN Firestick app, which is available in the Amazon Fire TV App Store.

1. Using your phone or PC, sign up for VPN service using this coupon link (Exclusive 70% Off)
2. From the Firestick home screen, select the Search icon.  Then search for “ipvanish”
3. In the search results, select IPVanish.  Then choose Install.
4. Finally, Open IPVanish for Firestick and enter the username and password you created when you signed up for IPVanish.

After you install your VPN app and use the VPN app to connect to a VPN server, you’re ready to download movies with your Firestick!

Part C:  Download movies!

UPDATE:  You can add a thumb drive or an external hard drive to a 2nd generation Firestick!  Just get a USB OTG splitter for $5.  Read more about this below in the section “Pushing Our Firestick DL Box to the Limits”.

In this step, we use a movie streaming app to actually download a movie stream to our Firestick or Fire TV.  After that, we transfer the movie to an external storage location, which is a fancy term for “thumb drive, hard drive, smartphone, SD card, laptop, etc” – really anything that can store our downloaded movie file(s).

1. Launch Terrarium TV
2. Select a Movie and play the movie
3. In the menu when you normally would press “Play” in Terrarium TV, instead select “Download”
4. Terrarium TV will now download your movie
5. You can track the progress of the download on the Home screen of Terrarium TV (well – you really just wait for the Notification to appear that the Download is finished).

Now that our movie is Downloaded onto our Firestick, we now transfer our movie file to be stored safely on an external storage drive/device.

Part D:  Add Thumb Drive to Firestick and/or Transfer movie files to another location

(aka “Media library”, thumb drive, external drive, etc) for safekeeping

In my case, to transfer the files from my Firestick to my external storage device, I used a Chromebook (a low-powered laptop that basically just runs a Chrome browser, and that’s it).

My low-powered laptop was perfect for retrieving my downloaded movies from the Firestick via WiFi.  How?  We basically just put a free app called ES File Explorer on our Firestick to act as a “file server”.  Use ES File Explorer’s built-in “Remote Manager” feature to allow us to download any file from our Firestick using any other device’s web browser.  Once again, in my case, I’m using a Chromebook laptop that has my Western Digital 4TB external hard drive ($80 or so) attached to it via USB 3.0 (for fast transfers).

1. Install ES File Explorer by using the Firestick “search” feature (like we did for IPVanish in the section above).
2. Launch ES File Explorer.
3. In ES File Explorer, select “Network” in the main menu
4. Then choose Remote Manager
5. Now select “Turn On” (the big blue button)
6. Using your Phone or PC (which must be on the same WiFi network as the Firestick), open a web browser (or FTP client, if you know what that is – either one works).
7. In the address bar, enter the “ftp://” address displayed on the Firestick screen (make sure to add the Port number, which is the 4 numbers after the IP address.  For example, if your screen says “ftp://123.456.789.0:6742” – then enter that into your address bar.
8. Now, click the “Download” folder or the “Terrarium TV” folder.

Now, from the “Download” folder, you should see any files you downloaded using Terrarium TV (make sure you only download Public Domain movies!).

Then right-click the Movie file you want to download and then click “Save As” to save the file to your computer.  This is the step where we could choose to save the file to an external hard drive or thumb drive.

Let the download finish!

I recommend that you use a FREE download manager such as “Chronos Download Manager”.  It lets you watch your downloads as they finish.  Here’s what that looks like:  

After your download is finished, you can watch the movie (as long as you have the copyright for the movie, or if it’s public domain).

At this point, we’re pretty much done with the Fire Stick USB port/movie downloader process!  Now we can use the section below follow-up.

Part E:  Clean-Up:  Erase the movie files from your Firestick to make room for more movie downloads!

Firestick only has a few gigabytes of storage (which isn’t much).  So clean it out to make room for movie downloads!

Here’s how to keep Fire stick clean.

Part F:  Optional – Set Up a Plex Media Server to enable ALL your devices to play your entire movie library

Plex!  The Plex app is widely celebrated and loved throughout the streaming community.  Go to Plex.tv to set up Plex quickly.

Pushing Our Firestick DL Box to the Limits…

Alright – that’s great – but let’s take it a few steps further:

In turning our Firestick into an always-on Downloader, there are several more things we can do.

First of all, we can add an Ethernet port (if we have a 2nd generation Firestick).

Second of all, we can add a USB thumb drive / external hard drive to our Firestick (as long as it’s a 2nd generation Firestick) to store our movies.

How to Add USB Port to Firestick

Just buy a USB OTG splitter cable from Amazon for $5.  Then plug it into your 2nd generation Firestick.  Yes – your Firestick must be 2nd generation (the one with the Alexa Voice Remote).  This will not work with 1st Generation Firestick.

Using the new (extra) USB port on your Firestick, you can now plug in mice, keyboards, and storage devices.

Note:  I had to use ES File Explorer to view/copy the files on the thumb drive I plugged into my Firestick.

How to Add Thumb Drive to Firestick

To “install” a USB thumb drive onto your Firestick, just insert a thumb drive into the normal-size USB port on the USB OTG splitter mentioned in the section above.

How to Add External Hard Drive to Firestick

Use the same method above to add an external hard drive to your Firestick.  But you must have a powered USB hub connected to the normal-size USB port on your USB OTG splitter.  This is because an external hard drive requires more power than the Firestick power supply can provide.  Therefore you give the hard drive the power it needs by plugging the external hard drive into a powered USB hub.  Then the powered USB hub simply plugs into the “extra” USB port!  This is the same USB port you gave your Firestick via the USB OTG splitter cable (in the section above).

Firestick Movie Download Progress

The screenshot below shows a movie downloading from Firestick to PC.