The strip of light on the back of the Pixel 11 Pro does two things if you use Google’s software: it signals an incoming call, and it shows Gemini’s status. Google said it had no plans to open the hardware up to third-party developers. An independent developer went ahead and did it anyway, and the resulting app — HiLight Studio — treats the Pixel 11 Pro HiLight as what it physically is: an array of eight individually addressable LEDs.
What HiLight Studio does with the Pixel 11 Pro’s LEDs
The eight-LED detail is the most interesting thing here and it comes from the project’s own documentation rather than from anyone’s hands-on. The repository’s one-line description of the app is “Control the eight-LED HiLight array on Pixel 11 Pro devices,” and its feature list confirms the app drives all eight — solid colours and animated patterns across the full array, not a single blob of light being switched on and off. That is a considerably more capable piece of hardware than Google’s own two use cases suggest.
What the app builds on top of it, per the same feature list:
- Per-app rules covering both foreground use and notifications, so a specific app can own a specific colour or pattern
- Saved presets with import and export, meaning configurations can be shared between people
- Wallpaper-derived colours and a Quick Settings tile for switching behaviour without opening the app
- Quiet hours, Do Not Disturb, Battery Saver and low-battery controls, so the light can be suppressed when it would be unwelcome or expensive
Functionally this is the notification LED that Android phones quietly dropped years ago, reconstructed on hardware that was shipped for something else.
Which phones it works on, and what installing it actually involves
The support list is narrow and the developer states it flatly. “HiLight Studio is experimental and supports only the Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold on Android 17 (API 37). It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google,” the project’s README says. The standard Pixel 11 is not on that list.
Getting it running is not a Play Store install. You download an APK from a GitHub prerelease, allow installation from your browser or file manager, and then grant the app shell-level access to Android’s lights service — either through Shizuku started over Wireless debugging, or through an ADB helper started from a computer with USB debugging enabled. Neither route requires root, which is the good news. The catch is permanent: the documentation states that access “must be restored after every reboot,” and the Shizuku instructions spell out that you restart Shizuku after each reboot and reopen HiLight Studio. Every restart of your phone means redoing a setup step.
The warning that comes from the developer, not from the coverage
Before anyone sideloads this, the single most important line in the project’s documentation is one that comes from the person who built it rather than from a reviewer:
The published APK is an experimental developer build signed with a debug certificate. It is not a Play Store or production-signed release.
That is worth understanding rather than skimming. A debug-signed APK has not been through Play’s review, and a debug signing key is not a meaningful identity check — it does not tell you that a future update to this app came from the same person, in the way a production signing key does. It also means updates arrive by you going back to GitHub, not by anything automatic. None of that is an accusation against this particular developer, who has been transparent about exactly this; it is a description of what you accept when you install any debug-signed build from outside the Play Store, and it is the reason this remains an enthusiast’s project rather than something to recommend broadly.
The wider point stands regardless. Google shipped an eight-LED array, wired it to two features, said it would not open it to developers, and one person with Shizuku and shell access has demonstrated what the hardware can actually do. If a notification light is the thing people build first, that is a reasonable hint about what Google should have built.
Source: HiLight Studio project repository, developer DhananjayBhosale (@Dhananjay_Tech), via 9to5Google
