Control the eight-LED HiLight array on Pixel 11 Pro devices.
Note
A fork of DhananjayBhosale/hilight-studio, adding on-phone setup (no computer and no Shizuku), call rules.
Important
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.
- Solid colours and animated patterns across all eight LEDs
- Per-app rules for foreground use and notifications
- Customisable microphone and camera activity rules, with any built-in animation and colour, for any app or one selected app
- Per-contact rules: a colour for one person or one chat, picked from the chats HiLight has seen
- Saved presets with import and export
- Wallpaper-derived colours and a Quick Settings tile
- Quiet hours, Do Not Disturb, Battery Saver, and low-battery controls
- Call rules: one look while the phone rings, another once the call connects
- Set up entirely on the phone: no computer, no companion app, no root
- Automatic root access when available, with Shizuku and ADB as fallbacks
- Manual update checks against the project's GitHub releases
- English, French and Japanese, selectable per app from Android's own language settings
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| Style | Apps | Setup |
- Download the signed APK from the latest GitHub prerelease.
- Open it on the phone and install it. Play Protect may warn about a sideloaded app that uses notification access; choose to install anyway.
If you previously installed v1.0.3 or an older debug-signed build, uninstall it once first, because the signing certificates are different. Installing over ADB also works and skips the Play Protect prompt:
adb install -r HiLight-Studio-v1.1.0-experimental-signed.apkDriving the LEDs needs android.permission.CONTROL_DEVICE_LIGHTS, which Android declares
signature|privileged. No installed app can hold it, so the renderer has to run in a privileged
process. On a rooted phone that is uid 0; otherwise it is the shell UID, which HiLight Studio
arranges on the phone itself, with no computer, no companion app, and no root.
If the phone is rooted, open HiLight Studio and turn it on. The app detects root automatically and uses it instead of Shizuku or ADB. Approve the one-time request from your root manager when it appears; no other setup is needed. The rest of this section is for phones without root.
Open the app, go to Setup, and follow the Built-in access card:
- Allow local network access when the app asks on first launch. Android 17 gates the phone's own debug service behind it; nothing leaves the device.
- Turn on Developer options: Settings, About phone, then tap Build number seven times.
- Turn on Wireless debugging, and stay connected to Wi-Fi. Afterwards it can be switched off again, as long as USB debugging is on — see If it does not connect.
- Tap "Pair with this phone". In Wireless debugging, choose Pair device with pairing code and leave that dialog open. A HiLight notification appears: pull down the shade over the dialog, type the six digits into it, and send.
That is the whole setup. The pairing is remembered, and HiLight Studio brings its own renderer back after a reboot or an app update.
Then turn Wireless debugging back off, if you would rather not leave it on. Switch USB debugging on first, in the same Developer options screen — it is only a toggle, no cable and no computer — and Wireless debugging can go off straight afterwards with the LEDs still running. What the renderer needs is the phone's debug daemon to keep running, and either switch does that; leaving the USB one on is the quieter choice, because Wireless debugging keeps a debug port listening on your local network and USB debugging with nothing plugged in exposes nothing. Turn Wireless debugging back on after a reboot so HiLight can start a fresh renderer, then off again.
Then grant Notification access for notification rules and Usage access for foreground-app rules. Turn on Live, then choose a look in Style. A new installation starts with its always-on style set to Off.
- Wireless debugging must be on and the phone must be on a Wi-Fi network. The debug service is found over mDNS on that interface; with no network there is nothing to discover.
- Leave a debug transport enabled afterwards. The renderer is started by the phone's debug daemon, and Android stops a daemon by killing everything it started — so if the daemon stops, the LEDs go with it. The daemon keeps running while either Wireless debugging or USB debugging is on, so you can switch Wireless debugging off after setup as long as you turn USB debugging on first. No cable or computer is needed for that, and it keeps a debug port off your network. Turning both off stops the renderer; HiLight starts a fresh one by itself when Wireless debugging comes back. The technical notes explain why no amount of detaching avoids this.
- The pairing dialog must still be open when you send the code, and it expires after about a minute. Closing it takes the pairing endpoint down with it; just reopen it and send again.
- If the Setup card says needs local network, grant that permission first. Without it the phone's debug service is invisible to the app.
- If the phone stops trusting the app's key, which happens after a factory reset or after clearing the ADB authorisations in Developer options, tap Forget pairing and pair again.
Only one renderer can drive the array, and a leftover one keeps sending black while the app still reports a connection. Restart renderer in the Setup tab clears any leftover session before starting a fresh one. With a computer to hand, the session count should be exactly one:
adb shell dumpsys lights | grep -c "Session token="Shizuku
Install Shizuku, start it using Wireless debugging, then open HiLight Studio, go to Setup, tap Request access, and approve the request. Shizuku has to be restarted after each reboot, and HiLight Studio reopened afterwards so Shizuku can hand it access.
A computer with ADB
Under Built-in access, tap Use a computer instead to copy the two commands. Run them with the phone plugged in and USB debugging enabled, and re-run them after every reboot. The first command stops any existing renderer, the second starts a fresh one out of the installed APK, so there is nothing to push.
The renderer enforces these limits even if app state is edited:
- Ambient effects stop after 30 seconds by default and can be raised to 5 minutes.
- Notification effects are limited to 1 minute.
- Privacy activity rules run only while the microphone or camera remains active. Their default rhythm is 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off, with a 1-minute maximum per continuous use.
- Sustained brightness tapers after 10 seconds of continuous light.
- The array can be active for at most half of any 10-minute window.
- Battery Saver, low-battery, quiet-hours, screen-state, and Do Not Disturb rules can pause output.
Long, continuous use of the HiLight LEDs has not been tested. If you build the project yourself, you can change the timing and safety values in your copy. Custom builds are your responsibility.
See Technical details for the renderer architecture, hardware findings, device verification, and known limits.
HiLight Studio has no analytics, account system, or telemetry. It uses the internet only when you tap Check for updates under Setup, which fetches public release information from GitHub. No app rules, notification data, or settings are sent. App rules and presets stay on the device. Notification and usage access are optional and are used locally for the rules you enable. Privacy activity rules observe only whether Android reports the microphone or camera as active; HiLight never reads or records audio, video, or their contents.
The app declares android.permission.INTERNET and android.permission.ACCESS_LOCAL_NETWORK because Android gates sockets and local service discovery behind them, including the connection HiLight Studio makes to the phone's own debug daemon during setup, and the update check above. Nothing else in the project contacts a remote host.
Per-contact rules read the sender's name from the notification itself, so they need no contacts permission — picking a contact by hand uses the system picker, which hands over only the row you tap. HiLight remembers the names of chats it has seen so the picker needs no typing; that list is stored on the device, is capped, and can be cleared at any time with Forget remembered chats under Setup. Message text is never stored, never logged, and never included in anything the notification inspector copies or shares.
Requirements:
- JDK 21
- Android SDK platform 37.0
- Android Studio or a command-line Android SDK installation
git clone https://github.com/Bysimeit/hilight-studio.git
cd hilight-studio
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest :app:build :app:lintBuild an installable developer APK with:
./gradlew :app:assembleDebugThe APK is written under app/build/outputs/apk/debug/. You may fork the repository, change the source, and build your own version under the terms of the MIT License.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. Hardware reports should include the Pixel model, Android build, renderer transport, and exact steps to reproduce. Do not include notification contents or other personal data.
Read Contributing before opening a pull request. Security issues must follow the private process in Security policy.
MIT. You may use, modify, redistribute, and sell the project. Redistributed copies must retain the license notice.