The Pixel HiLight feature is reportedly getting some new colors soon, in addition to some new functionality that hasn’t been present in the feature since it was launched with the Pixel 11 series devices back in August. HiLight is a Pixel 11 Pro-exclusive feature, and can be found on the Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL, as well as the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. The base model Pixel 11 is the only model that doesn’t offer it.
Since the feature was launched with Android 17, it only offered five color choices to customize the color of the light. This includes teal, yellow, white, pink and purple. Google is expanding the list of available color choices by four, but it is reported that these color choices are not yet live for users on stable software builds.
The Pixel 11 Pro HiLight colors will expand through four choices, extending to Messages compatibility
In addition to the five mentioned colors, HiLight gets the options to set the light color to orange, cyan, green and blue. This is according to Android Authority, who was able to enable the new color customization menu in the latest Android 17 QPR2 Beta 5 build. As part of this update, it was also discovered that Google is working on enabling HiLight for Google Messages. Although it still only works with your favorite contacts, as it does now for phone calls from those specific people.
Google already confirmed that HiLight would expand to support messages in the future, but it did not give exact dates. While messaging support has been rolled out, the HiLight still lacks the ability to work with third-party messaging apps, which is something many users have been asking for since the launch of the Pixel 11 series. Currently, Google has given no indication that HiLight would move to support third-party messaging apps.