The Pixel 11 Pro’s HiLight feature looks cool, but it’s missing 5 big features

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I miss the days when notification LEDs were a thing. I still remember the red light flashing on my BlackBerry whenever a notification came in. I’d immediately pick up my phone and check what I’d missed. Smartphones have mostly left that idea behind. Yes, Nothing did bring it back in its own way with the Glyph lights, but personally, that feels like a little too much of a light show. That’s why Google’s HiLight feature on the Pixel 11 Pro series immediately caught my attention.

It feels like a much more modern take on the notification LED I used to love. The light sits neatly inside the camera visor; it can glow in different colors, and it’s quite subtle. But the problem is, after using HiLight, I can’t stop thinking about how much more useful it could be .

Right now, HiLight can glow when I get a call from one of my favorite contacts, and it can also show me when Gemini is thinking, responding, or speaking. Those are nice touches, but they also make the feature feel like it’s only scratching the surface. Because if Google has already put this colorful light on the back of my Pixel, why stop there? Which brings me to my wishlist, because I have plenty of ideas for what Google should make HiLight do next.

Call notifications are a good start, but I’d love HiLight to go one step further and tell me which app is trying to get my attention. Imagine being able to assign a different color to each one: Instagram could glow pink or purple, WhatsApp could be green, and regular text messages could be white. After a while, I wouldn’t even have to think about it. One glance at the back of my phone would tell me exactly what had come in.

That would be especially useful while I’m working. I could give Slack and Teams their own HiLight colors, so the moment I see one of those colors flashing, I know it’s probably worth picking up my phone. At the same time, if I see the pink glow I assigned to Instagram or the green one for WhatsApp, I can leave my phone where it is and keep working.

Instead of every notification giving me another excuse to unlock my phone, the light itself could help me decide what actually deserves my attention. It could even help me avoid those moments that turn into 20 minutes of doomscrolling .

What would make this even better is being able to assign HiLight colors to individual contacts, similar to how Google already lets you customize the light for calls from your favorites. That would take the guesswork out of notifications almost entirely, because I wouldn’t just know which app sent something; I’d know who was trying to reach me.