Cyanogen this week began rolling out its latest CyanogenMod 12 nightlies, which bring some “much needed” new features, including dynamic Quick Settings tiles and Wi-Fi priorities. The releases also bring IMAP push improvements that promise to improve battery life and networking usage.

“One of the most requested  features requested from Google since the ICS days was the implementation of the IMAP IDLE protocol to the stock Email app,” Cyanogen explains.

The IMAP IDLE protocol delivers emails as soon as they are detected by the email server by maintaining in active connection. It also means that your device doesn’t have to check for emails periodically every few minutes, and thus reduces battery usage.

Google is yet to bake this protocol into stock Android, but thanks to Cyanogen, it’s included in the latest CyanogenMod 12.1 releases.

Another big new feature is dynamic Quick Settings tiles, “a way to spawn new tiles when certain events are fired by the OS.”

In addition to the standard set of options you’ll find in the Quick Settings menu, dynamic tiles adds things like a root symbol that appears only when you’re in a root session. A list of apps currently using root access can also be found in the notifications shade.

Finally, the CyanogenMod 12.1 nightlies bring Wi-Fi priorities, which is designed to make it easier to manage connections to dual-band and multi-SSID networks. The “Saved Networks” menu inside Wi-Fi settings lets you configure your preferred network list and disable Android’s auto-manage function.

If your Android device is supported by CyanogenMod 12.1, you can get the latest nightlies for it now via the Cyanogen downloads page. As with all custom ROMs, installation requires an unlocked bootloader and a custom recovery.

• SourceCyanogen