Google has been redirecting its focus on improving Pixel 11 Pro's HiLight LED, a feature that has been rather limited at launch. Android 17 QPR2 Beta 6.1 now makes the LED glow when receiving notifications from favourite contacts, but that could soon extend to WhatsApp notifications.
That's right. Hidden code strings uncovered by Android Authority in the latest Android Canary 2610 release suggest Google is working on adding WhatsApp support to the Pixel HiLight feature. Once rolled out, the limitations of the Pixel 11 Pro series' HiLight feature should be a thing of the past.
The internal code strings of the HiLight feature now mention "WhatsApp" alongside Google Messages. They bear similar string values named "light_animations_favorite_message_summary" alongside the user-facing string "Subtle lights when your favourite contacts message you with Google Messages or WhatsApp".
While the integration does not appear to be fully active for public testing just yet, its presence confirms that the Pixel 11 Pro's LED will soon be capable of lighting up for WhatsApp alerts. Considering Google takes its sweet time to roll out features and the sheer importance of this feature, we expect WhatsApp support in HiLight to be a huge talking point in the next Pixel feature drop.
That said, while the added support for WhatsApp notifications, messages from favourite contacts and calls makes the feature more useful than it was at launch, HiLight is still very limited in what it can do. Plus, with Google still refusing to open its API to third-party developers, it's almost a given that we won't see it turn into a fully-fledged Nothing glyphs-like experience.
Some developers have succeeded in reverse-engineering the support and creating third-party apps to enable support for a wide range of apps and customisations. One of them is HiLight Studio, which can be downloaded for free and runs on Shizuku with elevated permissions.
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