A few months ago, I was staying in a rental and they didn’t provide a remote—so I had to figure out the app method too. First, double-check if your Fire Stick is still connected to Wi-Fi (if it's not, it won’t show up on the app at all). In my case, the Fire Stick had somehow dropped the network and just sat idle on the “no connection” screen—no way to fix it without a remote. 🤦‍♂️

What finally worked was borrowing a USB keyboard with a micro USB OTG splitter (a bit of a hack, but it let me navigate to the Wi-Fi settings). Also, make sure Bluetooth is off on your phone during setup—that interfered once for me too. Here's a super detailed guide that helped me figure out the app method and some alternative tricks: control Fire TV Stick without a remote. It goes through stuff like HDMI-CEC, mobile app fixes, and even using Alexa if you have it. Honestly saved me a ton of frustration.