The Cortex Cloud app
The Nano Cortex has no screen, so past the six knobs your phone is the interface. This is where captures come from, where effects get chosen, and where nearly every setting lives.
Neural DSP says the device operates fully standalone and that the app primarily facilitates capture downloads and firmware updates. That's true as far as it goes — you can play a gig without ever opening it. But choosing which overdrive sits in Pre-FX 1, editing anything past a single macro, picking an IR microphone position, renaming a preset, or changing a single setting all require the phone. Premier Guitar's reviewer put it more plainly: using it without the app seems almost unimaginable. Treat the app as half the instrument, and keep a tablet or spare phone in the gig bag.
How to get hereOpen Cortex Cloud and go to the device tab — the pedal-and-Bluetooth icon, third along the bottom bar.
Take the update before anything else
The banner sits at the top of Devices. Get to NanOS 2.2.1 or later first — several things in this guide don't exist on older firmware. Leave the phone unlocked, awake and next to the pedal until it finishes.
Add New starts pairing
Tap it, then on the pedal hold EXIT and CAPTURE together for one second. The Nano appears in the list — pick it. That combo is the whole pairing secret and it's printed nowhere on the pedal.
Check which device is selected
Downloads go to whichever device is selected here. If you tap download and nothing ever lands on the pedal, this is almost always why — the app was pointed somewhere else.
Back up now, while it's still factory
Save a cloud backup before you add a single capture. It costs one tap and it's the only way back if you later fill all 25 slots with things you don't want.
How to get hereThe search tab — the magnifying glass in the bottom bar. Make sure your Nano Cortex is the selected device first.
Start with Neural DSP's own profile
Not the open cloud. Search their profile first — the quality floor is far higher, and as a new owner you have no way yet to tell a good capture from a badly-made one.
Sort by popularity, then filter
Filter by instrument and gain range. Popularity is a crude signal but it's the only one you have before your ears are calibrated to this pedal.
Read the description for ONE thing
Does it include a cab? A capture taken from a mic'd cabinet already contains a speaker; one taken through a load box does not. Getting this wrong is the single biggest cause of “it sounds boxed-in” and “it sounds fizzy”.
Audition before you spend a slot
One tap plays it through the pedal without downloading. You only have 25 footswitch-reachable slots — spend them on purpose.
Download is where the destination prompt comes from
Tapping this is what opens the bank-and-slot picker on the next screen. Don't lock the phone, background the app or turn off Bluetooth until it completes.
How to get hereOpen your preset list, then tap the button to the right of any preset.
The button to the right of any preset
This opens the contextual menu, and it is the only route to everything below. Nothing on the pedal itself will rename or reassign a preset.
Rename Preset — do this immediately
Four foot-presets called “Preset 2” are worthless on a dark stage. Name them for the song or the sound, while you still remember what you built.
Assign to Footswitch
This is how a preset gets under your foot. Only four are reachable that way at once, so the assignment is a real decision rather than an afterthought.
Delete Preset
Same menu. Worth knowing where it is before you need it, and worth having that cloud backup before you use it.
Three pieces, not one
People assume the app does everything. It doesn't — custom IR uploads are browser-only, and a surprising amount works with no phone at all.
Cortex Cloud app
iOS and Android, phones and tablets
Connects: Bluetooth only
The actual editor for the Nano Cortex. Everything deeper than one macro per effect happens here.
Using the Cortex Cloud app with Nano Cortex · Nano Cortex FAQCortex Cloud website
cloud.neuraldsp.com in a browser
Connects: Your account, not the pedal
Browse and collect captures and presets, manage your profile — and the only place you can upload your own IR files.
Cortex Cloud · Nano Cortex FAQ · Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0The pedal itself
Six knobs, five buttons, two encoders
Connects: Nothing required
Fully playable standalone. Switch presets, scroll captures and cabs, capture an amp start to finish, tune, tap tempo.
Nano Cortex FAQ · Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0Do I need my phone for this?
The honest answer, task by task.
| Task | Where | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Play, and switch the four footswitch presets | On the pedalMobile app | — |
| Scroll captures and cabs | On the pedalMobile app | Turn Footswitch I or II |
| Adjust GAIN, BASS, MID, TREBLE, AMOUNT, LEVEL | On the pedalMobile app | — |
| Bypass an effect slot | On the pedalMobile app | Hold FX on the pedal |
| Per-preset capture volume and Input Gate | On the pedalMobile app | Hold CAPTURE for 2 s |
| Capture an amp or pedal, start to finish | On the pedalMobile app | The app adds a guided flow with wiring diagrams |
| Tuner and tap tempo | On the pedal | — |
| Choose WHICH effect loads into a slot | Mobile app | Not possible on the pedal at all |
| Edit an effect's individual parameters | Mobile app | The pedal gives you one AMOUNT macro |
| IR microphone, position, phase, high-pass and low-pass | Mobile app | — |
| Rename, delete, duplicate or reorder presets | Mobile app | — |
| Download captures, presets and IRs to the pedal | Mobile app | — |
| Device settings menu | Mobile app | — |
| Firmware updates | Mobile app | Over Bluetooth, not USB |
| Cloud backups | Mobile app | Up to five |
| Browse and collect community content | Mobile appWebsite | — |
| Upload your own IR files | Website | Not in the app — a genuine surprise |
| Upload and share your own captures | Mobile appWebsite | — |
Before you can do anything
- 01
Create a free Neural DSP account and register your Nano Cortex.
Both are required to use Cortex Cloud. There is no subscription — cloud access, community captures and uploads are all free.
Nano Cortex FAQ · Using the Cortex Cloud app with Nano Cortex - 02
Install Cortex Cloud from the App Store or Google Play.
Phones and tablets both work. A cheap tablet on the music stand is a common setup, because the app is the only editor there is.
Using the Cortex Cloud app with Nano Cortex · Forum: desktop editor feature request - 03
Update the app before you update firmware.
Owners who updated the pedal without moving the app to 2.8 or later couldn't see the new features at all.
Updating your Nano Cortex
Connecting the pedal
- 01
Open the app, go to Devices, and choose Add New.
Nano Cortex Quick Start Guide · Bluetooth pairing guide - 02
On the pedal, hold EXIT and CAPTURE together for one second.
The GAIN ring illuminates clockwise and the Footswitch I LED blinks slowly. That's pairing mode.
Nano Cortex Quick Start Guide · Bluetooth pairing guide - 03
Select the pedal in the app.
On Android, grant the app Location permission — Bluetooth Low Energy scanning requires it, and without it the pedal simply won't appear.
Bluetooth pairing guide · Forum: pairing problems
Tens of thousands of captures, wildly variable quality
Reviewers criticised this directly: inconsistent naming, minimal descriptions, no meaningful quality tagging. Filtering isn't optional, and the order you do things in matters.
- 01
Start with the 25 captures already on the pedal.
They're curated, consistent in level, and shipped with parameters at noon. Downloading two hundred cloud captures on day one is the single most common way to end up paralysed with a library where half the content is unusable.
MusicRadar review · Forum: volume levels not saving between presets - 02
Then browse Neural DSP's own Cortex Cloud profile first.
Over 1,393 Quad Cortex factory captures were made available to Nano owners in November 2025, and 669 Neural Capture V2 captures across 41 device types were published the same month. That's a large, consistent, first-party library before you touch community uploads.
Nano Cortex firmware updates · NanOS 2.2.0 release notes - 03
Sort by popularity, and filter by instrument and gain range.
Cortex Cloud's search was rebuilt in March 2026 — faster, with title and tag matches ranked higher. There are tens of thousands of captures, so filtering is not optional.
Cortex Cloud search and performance update - 04
Read the description for whether a cabinet is included.
This is the single most useful thing to check before downloading, because it decides whether you run the IR Loader on or off. Uploaders are inconsistent about saying so, which is why the on/off diagnostic below exists.
Forum: amp + cab captures · MusicRadar review - 05
Expect quality to vary, and audition before you commit a slot.
Reviewers criticised the inconsistency directly: capture quality varies, naming is inconsistent, descriptions are minimal, and there's no meaningful quality tagging. NanOS 2.2.0 added one-tap capture auditioning in the app, which makes this much less painful.
MusicRadar review · NanOS 2.2.0 release notes
The community's own diagnostic for a downloaded capture, and the fastest way to judge one: if the IR Loader is off and it sounds bad, the capture probably has no cabinet in it. If the IR Loader is on and it sounds bad, the capture probably already includes one. Flip the IR and listen again before you conclude the capture is poor.
Owners repeatedly name Amalgamaudio, Tone Junkie and Sweetwater Studios as consistently reliable capture creators. Treat that as a starting point rather than a ranking — it's a handful of forum recommendations, not a survey.
Getting a capture onto the pedal
- 01
Pair the pedal, then download from within the app.
Captures transfer over Bluetooth. You need internet at download time, but not afterwards — once a capture is on the pedal it plays with no phone and no signal.
Using the Cortex Cloud app with Nano Cortex · Nano Cortex FAQ - 02
Choose a destination slot, or send it to the User Library.
The pedal holds five capture banks of five, plus a User Library. The library position is where all five capture indicators light at once. Save there when you don't want to occupy a bank slot you're using.
Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Creating Neural Captures on Nano Cortex - 03
Level-match it before you trust it.
Cloud captures are gain-staged by whoever uploaded them. Hold CAPTURE for two seconds and set per-preset capture volume, −24 to +12 dB, against a factory preset as your reference.
Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Forum: volume levels not saving between presets - 04
Don't lock the phone or background the app mid-transfer.
Bluetooth transfers are the flakiest part of the ecosystem. Disconnects mid-operation are a recurring complaint and usually need a power cycle.
Forum: Bluetooth disconnection during recording · Updating your Nano Cortex
Neural Capture V2 is a higher-resolution capture format. Since NanOS 2.2.0 the Nano Cortex can PLAY V2 captures, but it cannot CREATE them — V2 creation is Quad Cortex only, with Nano support described as under development. So you can download and use the 669 V2 captures on Cortex Cloud, but anything you capture yourself is V1. Captures made on either device are otherwise fully interchangeable and officially the same quality.
Everything about presets except playing them
The pedal switches presets. The app is where they get organised.
Rename, delete, or assign a preset to a footswitch.
Tap the button to the right of any preset to open its contextual menu — rename, delete and footswitch assignment all live there. All app-only: the pedal has no screen, so a name exists purely for your benefit in the app's list.
Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Creating and managing presets · Using the Cortex Cloud app with Nano CortexReorder by dragging.
Added in NanOS 2.2.0. Crucially, MIDI CC and Program Change assignments stay put when you reorder — the PC number belongs to the slot, not to the preset that's sitting in it. Plan your MIDI mapping around slots.
NanOS 2.2.0 release notes · Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0Assign which four presets sit under the footswitches.
IA, IB, IIA and IIB are the only foot-reachable slots. Everything else lives under All Presets and needs MIDI to reach.
Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Forum: just 4 presets on a live show?Duplicate and delete.
Duplication exists — NanOS 2.1.0 shipped a fix for same-name duplication. The exact tap-by-tap flow isn't documented anywhere we could verify.
NanOS 2.1.0 release notes · Creating and managing presetsSet the Preset Operation Mode.
4-Preset Mode is the factory default: IA/IB on Footswitch I and IIA/IIB on Footswitch II. Switching to 2-Preset Mode turns Footswitch II into a global bypass instead.
Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Creating and managing presets
The half of the instrument that only exists here
Load a device into each of the five effect slots.
This is the big one. The pedal cannot do it at all — it can only select a slot and turn AMOUNT. Which of the 50+ devices sits in Pre-FX 1, Pre-FX 2, and the three post slots is entirely an app decision, and the slot rules are strict: modulation only in Post-FX 1, delay only in Post-FX 2, reverb only in Post-FX 3.
Nano Cortex device list · NanOS 2.0.0 release notes · Nano Cortex FAQEdit each device's full parameter set.
AMOUNT on the pedal is a single macro. Everything else — times, feedback, ratios, thresholds, mixes — is in the app.
Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Nano Cortex FAQSet the IR microphone, position, phase, high-pass and low-pass.
Ten factory cabinets across five microphones and six positions. Microphone and position selection only applies to factory IRs; your own uploads get level, phase invert, high-pass and low-pass. This is where most of your real tone-shaping leverage lives — more than the three tone knobs.
Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Nano Cortex FAQAssign expression pedal targets and outgoing MIDI.
Expression can drive GAIN, BASS, MID, TREBLE, AMOUNT, LEVEL, or bypass the capture, IR or any slot. Each preset can also send up to twelve MIDI messages when it loads, and each footswitch can send twelve of its own.
Using MIDI on Nano Cortex · Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0
Custom IR uploads are the one thing that is neither on the pedal nor in the app — they go through the Cortex Cloud website in a browser. There's room for 256 of your own IRs. Neural DSP doesn't publish a maximum file length or required sample rate.
NanOS 2.2.0 added up to five cloud backups covering presets, captures, IRs and settings. Take one before a gig and before any firmware update. One warning worth reading twice: downloading a cloud backup OVERWRITES everything currently on the device — it is a restore, not a merge.
What's in the settings menu
All app-only, and two of them are common causes of “my pedal is broken”.
- Preset Operation Mode
- Four presets under the footswitches, or two plus a global bypass.
- Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0
- Knob Operation Mode
- Immediate by default. Switching it to latching means a knob does nothing until it passes through the stored value, which is a common cause of “my knobs are broken”.
- Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0
- IR bypass
- Globally, or per output since NanOS 2.1.0 — so one jack can feed a real cab while the other feeds a cab-simmed signal to front of house.
- NanOS 2.0.0 release notes · NanOS 2.1.0 release notes
- EXP/MIDI port mode
- Expression pedal or MIDI input. Set this before you plug a MIDI controller in and wonder why nothing happens.
- Using MIDI on Nano Cortex · Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0
- Expression calibration
- Required on first use. Rock heel to toe and save.
- Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0
- USB Playback Volume
- Level of computer audio arriving over USB. Defaults to −6.0 dB.
- NanOS 2.1.0 release notes
- Mute Input / Mute Outputs
- For reamping — stops direct monitoring and signal doubling.
- NanOS 2.1.0 release notes · Reamping on Nano Cortex
- LED brightness
- Worth turning up. The complaint about the indicators is daylight legibility, not dark stages.
- Nano Cortex User Manual 2.2.0 · Guitar.com review
Limits of the app itself
There is no desktop editor. Cortex Control is Quad Cortex only, and Neural DSP's FAQ answers “desktop controller” with “none available”. The feature request thread is one of the most-viewed in the Nano forum. An unofficial community-built desktop app exists but is not supported.
Bluetooth drops are a recurring complaint, including mid-transfer and mid-recording, usually needing a power cycle. Don't put the phone in the critical path on stage.
Offline mode only arrived in NanOS 2.2.0. Before that, owners at venues with no signal couldn't change device settings at soundcheck — a 55-reply thread with over three thousand views. Sync everything you need while you have connectivity.
Android is supported for the app, but not for USB audio — owners report crackling, and support noted they don't support Android phones as audio interfaces because there are too many of them.
Quad Cortex presets will never load on the Nano. The fixed signal chain can't represent Quad Cortex routing. Captures transfer freely; presets do not.
Neural DSP has officially ruled out running their plugins on this device. The difference between Neural Capture and plugin amp modelling, combined with the fixed chain, prevents it.
- Measured
- Read off the hardware by us, not taken from a document.
- Official
- From the manufacturer's manual, FAQ, guides or release notes.
- Community
- Reported by owners. Corroboration, not a primary spec.
- Our reading
- Our interpretation, not something Neural DSP states.
- Unverified
- We could not confirm this, or sources disagree.