Nothing OS 4.0 for CMF Phone 1 and 2 Released with Android 16 (Download)
Nothing Tech has officially released the Nothing OS 4.0 stable update featuring Android 16 for the CMF Phones. Nothing OS 4 features a refreshed visual experience that feels more consistent, leading to updated status bar icons, refreshed first-party app icons, deeper Extra Dark Mode coverage, and smoother animations. It also features multitasking and daily flow, improvements including refined Pop-up View with Dual Windows, 2×2 Quick Settings tiles, and more widget sizes. The community’s strong interest in at-a-glance information led to the introduction of Live Updates to the lock screen and Glyph Interface.
Nothing OS 4.0 Flow for CMF Phones is Here
The rollout of Nothing OS 4.0 begins today for the CMF Phone 1 and CMF Phone 2 Pro.
Arriving just in time for the holidays, Nothing OS 4.0 offers a more refined and personalized experience. This update introduces a visual overhaul, deeper system-wide customization, and performance enhancements designed to make daily interactions smoother and more intuitive.
Rollout Schedule
To ensure a stable experience, the update is being released in stages:
Nothing Phone (3a) Lite: The update will arrive in early January, marking the completion of the general release.
CMF Phone 1: The rollout starts today, with availability expanding to more users over the coming days.
CMF Phone 2 Pro: Distribution will begin in the next few weeks as part of the phased release.
Features & Changelog
The update builds on the foundation of OS 3.0 but strengthens the core experience in meaningful ways. UI components follow a more coherent structure, iconography has been refreshed for clarity, and animations have been reworked so navigation feels genuinely responsive rather than laggy or sluggish.
Design & Visual Improvements
Refined First-Party Icons now feature cleaner, more minimal design work. The home screen feels balanced, modern, and genuinely comfortable to live with daily. This might sound superficial, but icon design is one of the things you look at hundreds of times per day—when it’s done right, it fades into the background. When it’s done wrong, it grates on you.
Updated Status Bar Icons for Wi-Fi, battery, and data indicators now follow a cohesive visual style inspired by Android 16’s design language. The simplified layout reduces noise, making status information easier to scan at a glance without turning your status bar into visual clutter.
New Lock Screen Clocks bring refreshed fonts and styles, including two new clock faces with a futuristic, geek-forward aesthetic that stays true to Nothing’s bold design language. For users who interact with their lock screen dozens of times daily, this matters.
Interaction Animations received particular attention. Physics and motion across the system have been refined so the Notification Shade, app transitions, and gestures respond with sharper tactility and depth. Every swipe and tap now feels smoother and more natural—the kind of polish that separates good operating systems from great ones.
Extra Dark Mode goes deeper than most implementations, delivering deeper blacks, improved contrast, and reduced power consumption. This creates a screen that’s genuinely gentle on your eyes at night while extending battery life—two benefits that work together rather than against each other.
2×2 Quick Settings Tiles: Most Quick Settings tiles now support 2×2 format. Helps you stack essentials without scrolling through the whole shade.
Functional Flow: Features for Focus
Beyond aesthetics, Nothing OS 4.0 introduces practical features designed to keep you focused and efficient.
Glyph Progress represents one of the most thoughtful implementations of notification redesign. Rather than bombarding you with alerts, rides, deliveries, and timers now sync across your screen and the Glyph Interface (Nothing’s signature notification system), showing progress through light and motion. What makes this particularly smart is that it’s no longer limited to specific partnerships—Nothing is integrating most apps that support this feature into Glyph Progress, rapidly expanding compatibility for the services users actually depend on.
Refined Pop-up View enables genuine multitasking. You can open two floating apps at once and switch between them with simple gestures, boosting efficiency without losing your place in either application. In our age of context-switching, this is more than a luxury feature—it’s becoming necessary.
Hidden Icons let you keep your layout clean by hiding any app from your App Drawer without moving it to a Private Space. It declutters your view while keeping less-used apps just a search away. This is a small feature with outsized impact on how calm your home screen can feel.
More Widget Sizes (including new 1×1 and 2×1 layouts for Weather, Pedometer, and Screen Time) let you slot at-a-glance information into tight spaces or build balanced layouts for faster scanning and a more personal home screen. Widget customization has become almost essential for Android power users, and Nothing is making it more accessible.
System and App Optimization introduces a new System and Apps Dashboard that shows which apps are running in the background and lets you optimize performance with a single tap. The system keeps itself fast, efficient, and consistent without requiring you to think about it—the way it should be.
Playground
Perhaps the most exciting addition is Playground, which represents the biggest creative leap in Nothing OS history. This is where artificial intelligence steps in to serve your creative ambitions rather than replacing them.
With Essential Apps, you create your own widgets by simply chatting with AI. No coding required. The AI does the hard work to bring your ideas to life instantly. A new Widget Drawer organizes all the widgets you build or collect from the community, keeping your creative tools organized so you can find, swap, and share widgets effortlessly.
This transforms your phone from a consumption device into a genuine canvas that’s personal, creative, and uniquely yours. In a market saturated with samey smartphones running samey software, this kind of differentiation matters.
Privacy and Transparency in AI World
As Nothing introduces more AI capabilities, the company ensures you stay in control. AI Status Hints & Usage Dashboard gives you exactly what you need: visibility into when an LLM is active (right in your status bar) and the ability to track usage in the dashboard. This transparency is increasingly important as AI becomes more integrated into our devices, and it’s refreshing to see a company taking it seriously rather than burying AI functionality in the background.
Essential Memory: Your Phone as Your Second Brain
With Nothing OS 4.0, Essential Memory becomes the next evolution in how Essential Space and Essential Search work together. Until now, Essential Space simply stored what you saved. With Memory, your phone begins to build an understanding of your captures.
Anything you save in Essential Space becomes a memory your phone can recognize and recall when you need it. Ask naturally and your phone brings back the moment you captured. This transforms your phone from a device that stores information into one that understands context and serves you intelligence.
How to download the stable version of Nothing OS 4.0?
Nothing OS 4.0 begins rolling out today, starting with CMF Phone (1), expanding to the rest of the CMF smartphone lineup over the coming weeks.
Navigate to Settings > System > download & install Nothing OS 4.0 OTA update.
