Google’s Pixel HiLight could soon become a little more useful, with an Android 17 beta pointing to more colours and possible support for messages from favourite contacts.
Pixel HiLight is one of the more unusual additions to the Pixel 11 lineup, and is exclusive to the Pro models. It uses a set of LEDs around the camera flash to light up when you receive a call from a favourite contact or when Gemini is working on a task in the background.
The problem is that there isn’t much you can actually customise right now. HiLight currently offers just five colours, although Google has previously indicated that nine could eventually be available.
That looks to be changing. Android 17 QPR2 Beta 5 contains four additional colour options, bringing the total to nine. The full set is blue, cyan, green, orange, pink, purple, teal, white and yellow. More importantly, the same beta contains code pointing towards another planned HiLight feature; message support.
References to LIGHT_ANIMATIONS_SETTING_FAVORITE_MESSAGES_ENABLED and LightAnimationsFavoriteMessagesController were found in the update, suggesting Google is working on allowing HiLight to react to messages from favourite contacts. Google already said during the Pixel 11 launch that it planned to expand HiLight in this direction, so the code suggests that work is now moving forward.
It’s still unclear how broad that support will be. It doesn’t confirm whether HiLight will work with Google Messages only or whether apps such as WhatsApp will eventually be included too.
There’s also no guarantee either change will arrive soon. Both the extra colours and message support have appeared in an Android 17 beta, and features found through APK teardowns can still be changed or dropped before reaching a public release.
For Pixel 11 Pro owners, though, these additions would at least give HiLight a little more to do. Right now, its feature set is fairly limited, so being able to customise the colour and get visual alerts for messages would make the camera-side LEDs considerably more useful.
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