Third-Party App Unlocks Pixel 11 Pro's Limited HiLight LED
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
A new tool from an independent developer expands the customization of Google's notification light beyond the manufacturer's restrictive defaults.
Google's HiLight notification LED on the Pixel 11 Pro offers limited functionality out of the box, according to reporting from The Verge. The feature currently only glows for two specific scenarios: when the device is face down during Gemini interactions or when receiving calls from favorite contacts. Furthermore, the official software restricts the LED to only one of five colors.
To address these limitations, X user Dhananjay_Tech has developed a third-party application called HiLight Studio. As reported by The Verge, the app allows users to customize the LED array with significantly more flexibility, including the ability to trigger rainbow pulses for specific Slack notifications or green waves for text messages. Users can adjust saturation, intensity, brightness, and timing per cycle, and can choose colors via a slider or eight preselected options.
HiLight Studio also supports the importing and exporting of presets for sharing. Because the app is not currently available on the Play Store, The Verge notes that installation requires sideloading from GitHub, unlocking developer settings, and performing several manual phone tweaks.