Real 2–4 player couch co-op on Fire TV Stick — past the controller bug
You pair a second controller for some RetroArch or Mario Kart on the big screen, and suddenly both players are moving the same character. It's not your setup — it's a well-known Fire TV and Android TV bug. Here's how to get clean, separate players.
Why your second controller doesn't get its own player
Multi-controller support on Fire TV and Android TV is genuinely broken. Connect two or more Bluetooth pads and, depending on the device and app, you'll hit:
- Everything mapping to Player 1 — both controllers drive the same character.
- Wrong port assignment — a pad auto-remaps to Player 2 or Player 3 for no reason, breaking menus and co-op.
- Dropouts as the stick runs out of Bluetooth slots.
Emulator communities have documented this for years, and there's no reliable in-app fix. The problem is the device's controller enumeration — so the fix is to hand it controllers it can count properly.
The fix: relay up to 4 clean players through your phone
Pair your controllers to your phone, and Controller Gateway relays them to the Fire Stick as up to four separate standard Xbox controllers — P1, P2, P3, P4, correctly assigned. The stick's own flaky Bluetooth never touches them.
Get the full version — £5.99How to set it up
- Pair each controller to your phone in Android's Bluetooth settings — up to four.
- Enable ADB debugging on the Fire TV (Settings → My Fire TV → About → tap the name 7×).
- Open Controller Gateway, Find your Fire Stick, tap Start, and approve the one-time prompt on the TV. Each pad now shows as its own player.
- Open RetroArch, Dolphin or your co-op game — set input ports normally and everyone gets their own character.
Because the controllers arrive as clean, individually-enumerated virtual Xbox pads over the network, the device never has to juggle multiple Bluetooth HID devices — the exact thing it's bad at.
Get everyone their own player.
Up to four controllers, correctly assigned, on your Fire TV — the way couch co-op should work.