The link you need is at or you can just click on this graphic: Interestingly, it’s not available in the App Store either, so you’ll have to go old school and download it yourself. To get that, you’ll need to get a program called Android File Transfer and install it. Let me show you the steps as it’s pretty easy once you know where to grab the app.įirst off, here’s my Finder window with an Amazon Kindle Fire 8 HD plugged in to my MacBook Pro: The bad news is that Apple doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of the Google-created Android operating system and while you can plug in a Windows hard drive and have it show up on your Mac system without fuss, Android requires that you actually download a new program and use that to access Android-based devices when hooked up to a Mac OS X system, even in 10.11 El Capitan. Under the hood, it turns out that your Kindle is running a custom version of Android, the same operating system that powers Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphones and LG wearables, televisions and much more. Congrats on what sounds like a very nice present: the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Fire 8 are very nice tablets with vivid color screens and, of course, tight integration with the Amazon experience, both books through Kindle and shopping through the various Amazon apps you can download.