Nothing Phone Tricks: 15 Hidden Features I Actually Use
Nothing Phone tricks get properly interesting once you stop treating Nothing OS like a standard Android skin. My biggest takeaway is that a Nothing Phone can be made faster, cleaner, and more personal with a few buried settings, and with a little extra setup, the Essential Key can become a genuinely useful action button without root access.
The Essential Key is way more useful when it stops being Essential Space
I managed to remap the Essential Key so a single press switches between vibrate and ring modes, a double press launches the camera app, and a long press launches Google Gemini. The best part is that this does not require root access, although it does take a few steps with Shizuku, Hail, and Button Mapper.
We've essentially unlocked a highly customizable action button for any Nothing phone with an essential key.
— Sam Beckman| Essential Key action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Single press | Toggle ring and vibrate |
| Double press | Open camera |
| Long press | Launch assistant |
Power button shortcuts are already flexible
Customizing the power key is much easier. In Settings, Special features, then Gestures, Nothing gives you two power button settings: one for double press and one for press and hold.
The double press menu has a stack of built-in options, but the crazy cool part is that you can also pick a third-party app or one of its shortcuts. For press and hold, I prefer switching away from the default digital assistant and back to the power menu, because it is a power button, right?
If you still want quick Google Gemini access after changing the power key, go to Navigation mode, tap the settings cog, and enable Swipe to invoke the assistant. With that on, swiping from the bottom corner brings the assistant back without sacrificing the power menu.
Hide the navigation bar, but know the Circle to Search tradeoff
Inside the navigation settings, you can enable the toggle that completely hides the navigation bar. It gives the phone a super clean, minimal look, but it also disables Circle to Search.
The workaround is MiCTS. With MiCTS, you can remap a long press of the Essential Key to activate Circle to Search instead, which means you can keep the cleaner navigation look without fully giving up that shortcut.
Three-finger screenshots are hidden in the gesture settings
Nothing hides another sneaky gesture inside the Screenshot gesture menu. Enable three-finger swipe, and you can take a screenshot by swiping with three fingers.
You can also press and hold with three fingers for partial screenshots. If you want to go all in on this gesture, Nothing also lets you disable the power and volume down screenshot shortcut altogether.
Floating windows can now juggle three apps
Pop-up view has been around for a while, but with Nothing OS 4.1, Nothing unlocked the ability to have three apps in the floating window space at the same time. You do not see all three windows simultaneously, but switching between them is quick.
When you drag an app to the top and release it, it becomes the active floating window. Open another app the same way, and the previous one collapses into a small floating pill. Tap the pill to switch between floating apps, and drag them up when you are done.
Experimental features bring back some Nothing personality
The Experimental features menu has a few options worth checking. AirPods users can enable an AirPods icon in the quick settings panel and the settings app, which makes them feel that little more native on a Nothing Phone.
There is also a section for integrating the phone’s Glyphs with third-party apps, although the options are fairly limited at the time of making the video. My favorite toggle in this menu is Dot matrix title, which brings the settings headings back to the lovely N Dot font that a lot of us loved from older versions of Nothing OS.
Lock screen depth effect is fun, but still janky
The new lock screen depth effect works when your wallpaper has a prominent foreground element. Long press the lock screen, tap Customize lock screen, unlock with biometrics, then tap the depth effect icon to place the clock behind the foreground subject.
If the effect does not work straight away, try changing the clock size, switching its alignment between center and left, or pinching and moving the wallpaper so the foreground element covers the clock by the right amount.
Atmosphere wallpapers are the customization trick I keep on
Atmospheric wallpapers are currently one of my favorite things about Nothing OS in general. When you pick a photo as your wallpaper, the atmosphere effect blurs the home screen version and adds a subtle grain effect, which helps icons and widgets stand out more.
You can also enable the glass effect for the lock screen version of the wallpaper. With both effects enabled, the lock screen gets that cool glass look, then unlocks into the blurry home screen version with a lovely animation.
I really hope Nothing lets us use depth effect and atmosphere together at some point, because I cannot go without my lovely atmosphere wallpapers on the home screen.
Regular app hiding is back, and it does not break notifications
With Nothing OS 3.0, Nothing removed the much-loved app hiding feature and replaced it with the not so loved private space feature. With Nothing OS 4, regular old app hiding is finally back.
Swipe into the app drawer, long press an icon, then tap the hide icon. The app disappears from the app drawer, but it does not stop working or sending notifications like private space does. It is literally just hidden from the app drawer.
To find hidden apps, scroll to the bottom of the app drawer, open the Hidden folder, and enter your biometrics. This is perfect for hiding customization apps or anything else without breaking their functionality.
Quick Settings finally gives more toggles the big-tile treatment
In Nothing OS 3, the Bluetooth tile was the only quick settings tile I could make large. With Nothing OS 4, I can tap the pencil icon, choose a tile, then use the little arrow to turn it into a large toggle.
I used it with the Glyphs tile and the Essential Recorder tile, and it immediately made my quick settings layout easier to tailor. It is a small change, but it makes building a layout that actually works for me way easier than before.
Long-press the torch tile for Glyph Torch
Everyone knows you can turn the regular torch on and off from quick settings, but long pressing the torch icon activates Glyph Torch. Depending on the phone, that turns on the respective lights or dot matrix interface.
Glyph Torch gives off a really soft light that is way less harsh than the regular torch. It sounds like a tiny thing, but it is a feature I use all the time.
Extra dark mode fixes the washed-out dark theme
In Display settings, open Dark theme, turn it on, and you can enable the new Extra dark mode toggle. This has been a long-requested feature because it replaces the washed-out dark gray look with a true dark theme.
With extra dark mode enabled, the background becomes properly black and there are far fewer splashes of color. That makes the phone much easier on the eyes in darker environments.
Status bar controls are perfect for decluttering
Right under the dark theme option is a little-known status bar customization section. I use it to declutter my own status bar by disabling the battery percentage, vibrate mode icon, Bluetooth icon sometimes, and the VPN icon.
You can also go the other direction and enable extra icons, like internet speed. These small bits of customization are exactly the kind of thing that add to the Nothing OS experience.
Power off verify is buried, but worth enabling
Power off verify means that when your screen is locked, you or someone else needs to enter the phone’s passcode before turning it off. The point is to prevent someone from immediately disabling tracking features if your phone has been stolen.
The setting is buried pretty deep. Open Settings, go to Security and privacy, scroll down to More security and privacy, then enable Power off verify about halfway down the page.
The recents screen has a better close-all gesture
One of my favorite Nothing features is also one I forget about all the time. Instead of swiping all the way to the end of the recents panel to hit Clear all, long press the active app in the middle and swipe up.
That gesture clears the entire recents panel straight away. It is much less cumbersome than hunting for the clear all button.
How I remap the Essential Key without root
This is the more complex trick, but it is the one that makes the Essential Key feel genuinely powerful. You need three apps for the process: Shizuku, Hail, and Button Mapper. Make sure you download the linked version of Shizuku, because it unlocks a few handy features that the original version does not allow for.
- Set up Shizuku first, because Hail requires Shizuku to work.
- Open Hail, go to Apps, filter by system, then search for Essential.
- Select Essential Recorder and Essential Space from the system app results.
- Go to Hail settings and change the working mode to Shizuku disable.
- Allow access all the time, return home, then tap the freeze icon.
- Open Button Mapper, toggle Use Shizuku, and allow access all the time.
- Tap Add buttons, press the Essential Key, then add the new custom button.
- Open the new button entry and toggle it on to enable remapping options.
Once the Essential Key is visible in Button Mapper, I set single tap to System, then Toggle ring/vibrate. I set double tap to Actions, then Open camera. For long press, I scroll down and select Assistant.
After that, I like increasing the button vibration a little, then enabling Screen off actions and Turn screen on. That means the shortcuts still work even when the screen is off.
I know Nothing wants users to make use of Essential Space and everything that goes with it, but I really hope they see how powerful native Essential Key remapping could be. Android is at its best when users get maximum control.
From Sam Beckman
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