How we build Software

Dan🧑💻 · 2026-09-04T10:18:00+00:00

Hi! I’m Dan. I joined Nothing in January, and I am in charge of software for Nothing phones. If you watched the Nothing OS 5.0 video (the one where Carl is playing pool), I am the person chatting to Rob at the end. I’ve been speaking to @Louis ☕️, @Rohit and @Zac 🛸, and they suggested I start writing more on Nothing community. Transparency is a big part of what we do at Nothing, so I’ll be on here more regularly. I’ll share what I am thinking about Nothing software, and I want to know what you think too. — What do you do all day? Most of my job is about prioritisation. There are so many good ideas out there that Nothing could be building, but we have to decide which gets made. Sometimes this is based on user feedback, data and the market, and sometimes it’s a gut feel we have for something we really believe in. Let’s take Nothing OS 5.0 as an example - by now you should have a better understanding of what is coming, so I won’t rattle off features, but I’ll try and explain the thinking behind it. — Why do people buy our phones? We start by asking why users like Nothing phones, and our software. There are lots of ideas out there, here are just a few: It’s a rejection of other big phone companies, and feels distinct. That says something about the people who buy it - they have good taste in tech. For software, that means it should look and feel different to everything else. Touching grass - People are tired of having their attention sucked into their phone every day. “Nothing” means a life without unnecessary tech, just the stuff which you choose to include in your life. Cryptic and playful - “Nothing” is about making tech fun again, and it is meant to be a bit mysterious. You have to use our phones for a while to unlock their secrets. There are lots of others too - some of our features are focused on personal productivity, and sometimes we do stuff about creativity and personalisation. There are too many ideas. We cannot do all of them. The ideas that I am most excited about are the ones that tie back to how Nothing started. We are called “Nothing” - a rejection of needless excess. Our logo looks like it is from a dot matrix printer, our first phone was called phone (1), and our phones look like they are right off the production line - transparent enough for you to see the inner workings. We can apply these ideas to software - by keeping the design minimalistic but different and cool, by building features that help you stay away from your phone rather than dragging you back to it, and by keeping the OS as a simple blank canvas you can make your own. We used these ideas to decide what we built in Nothing OS 5.0. — Nothing OS 5.0 We wanted to focus on improving what we already do well, rather than adding things that might feel un-Nothing. We didn’t want to drift away from what made all of you like us in the first place. That is why we focused a lot on broad improvements to design and experience across the OS, rather than just one new area. We did a full audit of everything we have built over the last few years, looking for points of friction, and looking at how features are really being used after they go live. We know from looking at our analytics that a lot of our most interesting features aren’t used by everyone. For example, we know it takes a long time for users to configure Essential Notifications, and some never figure it out at all. This is our fault, not theirs, so we created the Glyph app to make this easier. We also know that if you are used to using OS4.1, sometimes it can feel basic in places - a lack of polish and character. We wanted to make using our OS every day delightful in lots of small ways, so we added a lot of UX improvements, upgraded the visual style, added more motion design, and tweaked the tech to make everything feel smoother and quicker. Where we have introduced new features we tried to base them on gaps we saw in how users actually use our phones. We visited stores, talked to users and took lots of photos of their homescreens and lock screens (even if their phone wasn’t a Nothing phone). We kept those near our product and design teams while we were working. We saw that some users wanted a detailed and techy UI, while some wanted their phone to look simple and slick. That’s why we created the two new lock screen clock faces - one minimal and stylish, one intricate and packed with information, almost like a terminal. We wanted everything we added to be inspired by a user’s needs and preferences, and built with love and creativity. You will have to tell us whether you think we’ve achieved our goal. — Why don’t you build a Nothing (insert existing app here)? We get a lot of requests from the community to build things like a Nothing Dialler, Messaging app or Calculator. We did build a Nothing Weather app, but haven’t expanded much beyond that. I can understand for many of you it is frustrating to drop out of the Nothing world into the Android world. The main reason we haven’t done this is comparing the cost to the benefit it brings. The dialler is a good example - there is a lot of regulation and requirements from carriers for diallers, covering things like emergencies and accessibility. The Google app also provides things like call screening, spam protection and caller ID. Building a new dialer is harder than it looks, and isn’t just a one-off cost - we’d have to keep spending money on it every time there was an Android update, regulatory change or carrier need. At the size we are, that would mean we’d have to deprioritize a lot of other things that we think are more valuable. It is again a question of prioritisation - if we did it, we’d either have to charge more for our phones, or do much less with our other software. The dialler is a very mature product - we don’t think there’s much value we can add in how it works right now. It would look better. It would not work better. We could make a calculator look like its from Nothing, but we can’t invent new Nothing maths. For the near future at least, we will be leaving most of the Google apps as-is, and focusing on making the overall OS shell and a few hero apps feel very Nothing. — What’s next? Our teams are focused on rolling out the Nothing OS 5.0 release across all supported devices, and are starting development on 5.1. Nothing OS 5.1 will be a smaller release, but still with a few exciting changes. (We will finally be allowing users to remap the Essential Key, for example). Lots of us are already starting to focus on what we do for Nothing OS 6.0 next year. This process should always start with talking to users, so we will be doing store visits, user interviews and hopefully talking to some of you over the next few months. It is still in the abstract stage at the moment - we are trying to refine our understanding of why people like Nothing phones, how their expectations of us are changing, and what is possible as technology evolves. 🗣️ I’d like to know what you think. You aren’t typical users, you are our core fans, so you know what feels like Nothing and what feels weird. What makes Nothing good? How would you describe it to a friend who has never heard of us? What would be an un-Nothing thing for us to build? Why would it feel wrong? If I keep writing about how we build software, what would you like to know about?

Nirajkumar_Vf52Mwq0aR

Don’t built anything carl bhai please give us nothing dialer.google dialer looks terrible….

grepGander

Akshu Kumar If you don’t develop nothing dialer and other applications then take permission from Google and Customize Google dialer as per nothing theme.

This community is amazing! I simply LOVE how so many people in the Nothing community couldn’t care less about licenses, contracts, and agreements 🤩 Plus completely ignoring the fact that Nothing is not a developer of every existing app in the world, and that in this particular case Google Phone is precompiled and digitally signed by Google, because Google is the owner and developer, and OEMs receive the app as a finished package and cannot modify its XML layouts, assets, or core code. None of that matters, because We WaNt It 😀

Even Samsung, GOOGLE’S CLOSEST BUSINESS PARTNER, was promptly rejected when proposing that idea (which you suggested):

Tl; dr - MADA, AKA Google’s Mobile Application Distribution Agreement, EXPLICITLY FORBIDS OEMs from modifying, decompiling and/or altering the interface of ANY Google branded apps, because Google maintains unified branding across the ecosystem (just like Nothing is doing with their own apps). The Google Phone app is designed to look and function identically whether used on a Xiaomi, Nothing, Asus or Google Pixel device. Google won’t allow anyone to change that.

ZXCVBNM

Dan🧑‍💻

“Hi Dan, hope you’re doing well! Could you please tell me if there are any plans to add an option to disable the app drawer in future updates, so that all apps can be placed directly on the home screen?”

_8OMIC_

grepGander that’s a hardcore answer to these people’s faces 🤣🤣🤣🤣 ,lmfao 😆.

Dan🧑‍💻

Филип this is really good feedback, thank you.

Dan🧑‍💻

LyphLeaf This area of ethics and law is an interesting one and is changing often. Some regions only ask for single party consent for call recording and some places it needs to be two party consent.

We will see how the industry evolves with this one I think.

Dan🧑‍💻

Sheepstealer a calendar would actually be a bit easier than a dialer, as we could build only the front end part more easily and connect to APIs. Still, it would only be a visual change rather than allowing significant functional change.

I wouldn’t want to be in the business of building a back end for a calendar - it’s a pretty well established product and hard to improve in functionality. Also, as soon as you start building anything that involves time, not just the current state of the software, it all gets really confusing. I once (in another company) had a team accidentally spend six weeks building a date picker for a form because the stuff that they needed to show wasn’t in generic libraries -and that’s just a date picker!

Unlikely we will do a calendar soon though - easier than a dialer but still not as valuable as other things we could be doing.

Dan🧑‍💻

abrahambatresw thanks, this is really good feedback. Your description of us is particularly helpful.

Rehan

Dan🧑‍💻 Hey Den Why is Smart Drawer still in beta? Will there be any new features or improvements coming to it? And when will the beta label be removed and Smart Drawer become a stable feature

_8OMIC_

Филип now that you mentioned, I also long forgot about the feature in gallery which let’s you cut out the object from a picture just by holding on to it for a sec. It was literally something which went unnoticed to many people .

Dan🧑‍💻

[unknown] we try and do that as rarely as possible, as they can be annoying. When I see one my thumb finds the skip button faster than my brain reads it

_8OMIC_

Dan🧑‍💻 hey, sir i also had one ☝🏿more suggestion , like i mean we’ve been focusing 👁️ too much on introducing new things . Ig we should rather focus more on solving the bugs and basic structure of nothing OS and roll-out 🤸🏿‍♂️ features in minor OS updates , I mean we can roll out features one by one , and that way the load of work will be less on the team and y’all can focus more on improving the existing structure.

Cuz for the user experience, ig this line stands as the perfect explanation :

“Practicing 1 move a 1000 times is better than learning 1000 new moves”

ChrisJ_Joseph_P1NpRo6vMr

Dan🧑‍💻 yea , I thought about that too , but then , I remembered , we have CHANNELOG to read and learn about the new features

That is why , I deleted that 😅(Silly me)

Sheepstealer

Dan🧑‍💻 I believe you could probably build it with your eyes closed, but I also believe you have more important and valuable things in mind right now.

That said, I still think a Nothing Calendar could be really nice, especially if it was deeply integrated with Essential. It could be a chance to add a little “let’s make tech fun” touch to it — maybe some small, unexpected features that make people wonder why no one has done them before.

And for Nothing Notes, I agree that it’s not essential, and it doesn’t need to be overly complicated either. Just a simple place for drawing, writing notes, making plans, etc., instead of relying on third-party apps that don’t really fit the phone’s vibe or interface — and, if you’ll forgive me saying it, can be pretty ugly.

anyway thanks for ur time, and will love and appreciate any effort you do.

oh yh idk if this the place but couple of things annoying me

1- contacts showing when sharing I didn’t find a way to remove or hide them

2- still cant quick share with ios… but maybe this on Android not you

LyphLeaf

One common complaint I’ve seen in the relevant community is that users can’t create folders in the app drawer with the default layout. Would you consider adding this feature?

ChandankumarDalai_NWzOJkLLzO

Daniel

Dan🧑‍💻 all the features are good but what about game mode. Yoy completely forgot about game mode. I also know that nothing phone is not for gaming but as a normal gamer the game mode is not good. So please give some attention to game mode.

Chaitanya_Soni

@Dan🧑‍💻 I request you to do something regarding the battery drain issue on NOTHING PHONE (3), It is too much noticable after Nothing OS 4.0 update, Please address this issue in future updates

SatishKumar_02

Dear Nothing Team 😘

DocYBA

This guy is ranting about a beta update 😂 😂 😂 and almost every problem he mentioned were ones I’ve never faced any issue with on my phone 3.

He mentioned the chrome issue but conveniently didn’t say how to fix it by enabling developer option.

All the other issues he mentioned were ones I’ve never faced on my phone, never once.

It’s called a beta update for a reason. You are given warnings before you install the beta update on your device. Its upto you if you wanted to download it or not.

@SatishKumar_02 stop trying to get attention and clout. Behave maturely and let the team do their work. If you still want to be pissed off about the nothing phone you have, sell it and buy something else. Thankyou

Samarth97

Zac 🛸 how about a small redesign in sidebar with cpu usage , cpu temperature, gpu temperature also directly opening apps in pop up view directly from sidebar people ask for voice changer aswell but I think that’s not a necessity but the ones I stated would be a great addition to game mode hopefully you guys have a talk about this and take it as a positive feedback also

Dan🧑‍💻 idk why but the battery efficiency is not upto the mark on 4a I’m not comparing with other brands but it really doesn’t works upto the mark as it should considering 5400mah(Indin varient) hopefully you guys look into it also I was really hoping that you guys add some colours to the ui instead of black and white also adding blur to the ui if possible give it as an option so users who don’t like it don’t use it also ability for widget stacking would be great

Have a great day

« Previous Page Next Page »