Nothing does not ship a branded USB driver installer the way Samsung or LG do. Every Nothing OS device, including the CMF Phone 1, relies on the standard Google USB driver and the Qualcomm-based composite ADB interface built into Windows 10 and 11. That makes setup simpler than most brands, but it also means the one driver problem people actually hit — a device stuck as an unrecognized composite device — has a slightly different fix than the OEM-specific guides suggest.
Nothing OS is close to stock Android with minimal skinning, and the company has not published a separate INF driver package on nothing.tech. In practice this is a good sign: it means Windows Update's built-in Android driver class, combined with Google's USB driver from the SDK, handles Phone (1) through Phone (2a) and the CMF Phone 1 without any brand-specific download. If Device Manager ever shows a missing driver for these phones, the fix is to point Windows at the generic Google driver rather than searching for a Nothing-specific one that does not exist.
Nothing OS keeps this path identical across Phone (1), (2), (2a) and the CMF Phone line, unlike some manufacturers that bury Developer Options under a differently named menu.
Plug the phone in with a USB-C data cable (not a charge-only cable — see the note below if the phone charges but never shows up in adb devices). Select File Transfer or PTP from the USB notification, not "Charging only." On the PC:
adb devicesA popup on the phone asks to authorize the connected computer. Tick Always allow from this computer and tap Allow. If no popup appears, the driver almost certainly is not installed correctly yet, or the cable is charge-only.
If Device Manager shows the phone under Other Devices with a warning icon:
C:\android_usb_driver.After installation, the device should reappear under Universal Serial Bus devices or Android Device depending on Windows version, and adb devices should list a serial number instead of returning an empty list.
With ADB working:
adb reboot bootloaderVia hardware keys with the phone powered off, hold Volume Down + Power until the fastboot screen with the Nothing logo appears. Confirm the connection with:
fastboot devicesNothing phones use the standard fastboot flashing unlock command rather than the older fastboot oem unlock syntax, matching Google's current unlock flow for Qualcomm Android devices. Unlocking wipes user data and permanently marks the bootloader state on the fastboot screen.
On Phone (1) and (2), the Glyph LED strip briefly draws extra power on connect, which on some older USB hubs causes a momentary disconnect right as Windows is enumerating the device. If adb devices intermittently drops the phone a second or two after plugging in, connect directly to a rear motherboard USB port instead of a front-panel hub, and confirm the issue disappears — it almost always does.
Because Nothing ships a fairly basic USB-C cable in the box on some regional variants, and because Phone (2a) in particular only supports USB 2.0 speeds over its port, a cable with damaged or missing data lines will still charge the phone normally while never presenting a data interface to Windows at all. Before troubleshooting driver software, swap the cable and confirm a different one is used for any device that charges but never triggers a USB notification.
Occasionally a Nothing OS update changes the exact USB descriptor the phone presents to Windows, which can make a previously-working manual driver binding appear to break right after an update installs, even though nothing about the physical connection changed. If ADB detection that worked yesterday suddenly fails after installing a Nothing OS update, reinstalling the Google USB driver from scratch (rather than assuming the existing binding still applies) resolves it in most cases, since Windows sometimes keeps a stale driver association tied to the old descriptor.
Anyone testing across a Phone (1), a Phone (2a), and a CMF Phone side by side needs to target commands explicitly, since adb refuses to guess which connected device a command should run against once more than one is plugged in:
adb devices
adb -s <serial> shellSerial numbers for Nothing devices follow the standard Android format rather than anything brand-specific, so there is nothing unusual to account for here beyond the general multiple-device targeting rule that applies to any Android phone.