M, the 5-year-old, was watching videos on TV via the Firestick. I don't know if my niece turned it on for her or if M already knows how to turn it on herself. I'd be surprised by the latter as it involves plugging in a power cord, turning on a power strip, turning on the UPS, waiting for the UPS light to stop flashing, then turning the TV on and changing the TV to the correct input Source.... or maybe pressing the button on the Firestick remote does that last part automatically*.
However, M seems perfectly familiar with using the Firestick remote to search for and navigate videos in its YouTube app. She mostly uses the voice-search option to search for specific things**, but also scrolls thru video thumbnails to select items that look interesting or familiar to her.
There were a few videos that came on which didn't seem geared to or appropriate for a kid her age. So I started looking up how to set it up to only show kid-friendly things.
After M left to go get ready for bed, I installed the "PBS Kids" and "YouTube Kids" apps on the Firestick.
I tried them out and found that doing a voice-search (via the mic button on the remote) from within those apps searches content from all the apps rather than just the current app, letting one jump right back out to non-kid content.
So next I created a new "Kid" profile on the Firestick and set it up to have access to a few kid-specific apps including the 2 mentioned above. I connected the YouTube Kids app to one of my YouTube accounts, so as to have access to more settings for it, but I don't see much extra you can do that way vs when not connected to an account.
I've got a PIN set up on the Firestick so the child can't simply switch back from the kid's profile to an adult profile.
Now that I have gotten all that done, I'm unimpressed with the results.
In the Firestick Kid's profile, the voice-search option does not work. You have to search by using the remote and on-screen keyboard to type in the words. I don't think M knows how to spell most of the things she would search on, and even if she does, she would probably have trouble doing it via the on-screen keyboard. Even when typing the searches in, the results don't seem to include content available in the PBS and YouTube Kids' apps. Maybe it only shows content from Amazon? I don't know.
Likewise, the home screen for the Kid's profile seems to only display Amazon content. (I'm not certain as it doesn't say where the content for each item is hosted.) To get to the other apps' content, you have to scroll down and find, select, and open the app.
Within the YouTube Kids app, I don't see a way to set up favorites. This page:
Subscribe to channels on YouTube Kids says you can tap on a "Subscribe" button... Okay, some videos do have a Subscribe button. But it's not there for the "Kiya & the Kimoja Heros" videos - those looked good so I wanted to favorite/subscribe them so they'd be easy to find next time. But no luck.
*I just tested this, and while it switches to the correct input Source, now I can't even get the Firestick input on the TV to work again. It seems to be switched off. The power button on the Firestick remote only seems to be turning the TV on and off, not the Firestick. Argh.
Is it that once you reach 45 years old or so, TV and audio technology magically knows it should never work for you on the first or second try, only after multiple tries and/or hours of frustration? I remember how when I was in my 20s, it all made sense, and it usually worked as I expected. Now it's a mess of cables and inputs and switcheroos and switching from the regular TV to something else never works right off anymore.
Earlier today I got out what I thought was a DVD to play an animated movie for the child. It's one I'd bought last year but hadn't watched yet. (
The Secret of Kells, part of the
Irish Folklore trilogy. In retrospect, it doesn't seem so great for a kid her age. Rather scary and grim.) The disk didn't work in the DVD player. So I thought maybe it had a non-U.S. region code and needed to be played from VLC on a laptop. But VLC locked up trying to load it. I finally realized it was a BluRay disk, not a DVD, so it needed to be played via the BluRay player.
Sigh. I guess the Firestick won't work again until the next time the youngsters come out to use it.
**It seems to work better for her than it does me; it recognizes the things she says better than it recognizes what I say.