The Pixel 11 Pro’s HiLight LED is bafflingly limited out of the box, but a new app removes its shackles

• The Pixel 11 Pro’s HiLight feature can’t do much out of the box, but a new app changes that
• Called HiLight Studio, this lets you use HiLight with any app and customize the colors and patterns
• However, setting it up requires jumping through far more hoops than a typical app

HiLight seems like it should be the big new addition for the Google Pixel 11 Pro series. This LED on the back of the phone can light up in a selection of colors, alerting you to calls from favorite contacts and letting you know when Gemini is active, but out of the box, that’s all it can do.

It can’t interact with any other app, and even for Gemini and favorite contacts, it’s limited in its customization, leading our Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review to describe HiLight as “not a must-have,” while some other publications went even further, with Android Authority calling it “pointless,” and GSMArena describing it as “borderline useless.”