President Emmanuel Macron postponed a state visit to Germany due to begin on Sunday to handle the worst crisis for his leadership since the "Yellow Vest" protests paralysed much of France in late 2018.
Some 45,000 police were on the streets with specialised elite units, armoured vehicles and helicopters brought in to reinforce its three largest cities, Paris, Lyon and Marseille.
On Sunday morning, the situation was calmer than the previous four nights, although there was some tension in central Paris and sporadic clashes in the Mediterranean cities of Marseille, Nice and the eastern city of Strasbourg.
The biggest flashpoint was in Marseille where police fired tear gas and fought street battles with youths around the city centre late into the night.
In Paris, police increased security at the city's landmark Champs Elysees avenue after a call on social media to gather there. The street, usually packed with tourists, was lined with security forces carrying out spot checks. Shop facades were boarded up to prevent potential damage and pillaging.
Local authorities all over the country announced bans on demonstrations, ordered public transport to stop running in the evening and some imposed overnight curfews.
The unrest, a blow to France's global image just a year from holding the Olympic Games, will add political pressure on Macron.
He had already faced months of anger and sometimes violent demonstrations across the country after pushing through a pension overhaul.
Nahel, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan parents, was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
The teenager was known to police for previously failing to comply with traffic stop orders and was illegally driving a rental car.
Several hundred people lined up to enter Nanterre's grand mosque for his funeral with volunteers standing guard and bystanders watching from across the street.
The shooting, caught on video, reignited longstanding complaints by poor and racially mixed urban communities of police violence and racism.
Macron has denied there is systemic racism in French law enforcement agencies.
There is also a broader anger in the country's poorest suburbs, where inequalities and crime are rife and French leaders have failed for decades to tackle what some politicians have called a "geographical, social and ethnic apartheid."
Rioters have torched 2,000 vehicles since the start of the unrest. More than 200 police officers have been injured, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Saturday, adding that the average age of those arrested was 17.
More than 700 shops, supermarkets, restaurants and bank branches had been "ransacked, looted and sometimes even burnt to the ground since Tuesday", Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said.
Players from the national soccer team issued a rare statement calling for calm. "Violence must stop to leave way for mourning, dialogue and reconstruction," they said on star Kylian Mbappe's Instagram account.
Events including two concerts at the Stade de France on the outskirts of Paris were cancelled, while LVMH-owned fashion house Celine cancelled its 2024 menswear show on Sunday.
The policeman whom prosecutors say acknowledged firing a lethal shot at Nahel is in preventive custody under formal investigation for voluntary homicide.
His lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, said his client had aimed at the driver's leg but was bumped when the car took off, causing him to shoot towards his chest. "Obviously (the officer) didn't want to kill the driver," Lienard said on BFM TV.
