Google's smartest Pixel 11 Pro feature is already driving me crazy

I’ve only had the Pixel 11 Pro XL for a few days, and somehow that’s still been enough time for it to remind me why I’ve had trust issues with Pixels all year. I really do try to give these phones a fair shot. I look for the good stuff, I get excited about the new features, and every time, I hope this will finally be the Pixel that doesn’t make me question my life choices a few days in.

This time, HiLight is doing the damage. And the annoying part is that I actually love the idea. It reminds me of the notification LEDs we used to have back in the day. I was quite excited to play around with it on my Pixel 11 Pro XL because, honestly, I’ve missed having something like this on a phone. Then I actually tried using HiLight.

What should have been a simple bit of customization turned into a confusing mess of menus, favorite contacts, disappearing options, and me repeatedly wondering whether I was doing something wrong. Spoiler: I wasn’t. HiLight is a great idea, but right now it is an absolute mess.

Why am I jumping through hoops for a color?

First and foremost, my gripe with HiLight is simple: why is something this basic so complicated? I went in thinking I’d spend a couple of minutes assigning different colors to my friends and family. Instead, Google somehow turned it into a treasure hunt.

Naturally, I started in the Settings app. That’s where HiLight lives, and on my Pixel 11 Pro XL, it was already enabled by default. So far, so good. I assumed I’d open it, see my contacts, pick the people I wanted, choose their colors, and be done. That would make sense, right? Well, apparently not.

To customize a contact’s HiLight color, I have to leave Settings, open the Contacts app, find that person, and customize it from there. It works, sure, but why am I bouncing between two apps for something this simple? If I’m already in HiLight settings, why can’t I choose a contact there and get on with my day? That’s really all I want from this. HiLight should show my contacts right there in Settings and let me pick whoever I want. More importantly, I shouldn’t need instructions to figure out something as basic as customizing a color. And yes, I actually had to look it up before I could get it working.

To make sure this wasn’t a me problem, I handed the Pixel to my dad and asked him to set a custom color for one of the contacts. He’s comfortable with tech, but he couldn’t figure it out either. If both of us had to hunt for instructions, I’d say Google has made this harder than it needs to be. It might not bother everyone, but it has definitely frustrated me.

Gemini decided to leave me in the dark

Somehow, picking colors isn’t even the part of HiLight that has annoyed me the most. Even worse, one of HiLight’s coolest tricks has stopped working on my Pixel 11 Pro XL.

At first, I thought I had messed up a setting somewhere. One of my colleagues ran into the same problem, and she fixed it by toggling the Gemini option off and back on, then restarting the phone. Naturally, I tried the same thing. Unfortunately, my Pixel had other plans. It still refuses to work.

What makes this even stranger is that other colleagues using the Pixel 11 Pro aren’t having the issue at all. So, once again, I started wondering whether my phone was just being difficult. Turns out, I have company. I came across a Reddit user with a Pixel 11 Pro XL describing almost the same problem. HiLight still works for favorite callers on their phone, but Gemini no longer triggers it when the phone is face down. They also tried toggling the setting and restarting the phone, with no luck.

According to the poster, Google Support told them it could be a server-side sync issue. Another person in the same thread reported an even worse experience: neither Gemini nor HiLight for favorite callers was working for them. So, at least I know my Pixel isn’t uniquely determined to annoy me. That’s reassuring, I suppose. So, there’s clearly some inconsistency here, and while the usual toggle-and-restart trick appears to have fixed it for some people, it hasn’t done anything for me.

HiLight could be so much brighter

For all the complaining I’ve done so far, though, I don’t want this to sound like I hate HiLight. I actually feel the exact opposite. Bringing back something that feels a lot like the notification LED from years ago is genuinely a great idea. Those tiny lights were useful back then, and I’d argue they’re still useful today, especially for someone like me who keeps their phone face down most of the time.

And that’s probably why its limitations bother me as much as they do. I want HiLight to do more. Seeing it light up when someone calls is useful, and having it glow while Gemini is thinking or responding sounds great too (though mine clearly missed that). But there are so many obvious ways Google could take this further.

Let me assign one color to WhatsApp and another to Instagram. Give text messages a different blinking pattern so I can tell what just came in without flipping my phone over. I’d even love to see HiLight work with the camera timer, where the flashes act as a countdown so the person in front of the camera knows exactly when the photo is about to be taken. None of this feels particularly far-fetched when there’s already a programmable light sitting on the back of the phone.

The funny thing is, I don’t even have to imagine what a more capable HiLight could look like. The open-source HiLight Studio app takes the Pixel 11 Pro’s LED much further than Google currently does. You can assign different colors to different apps and play around with patterns such as pulse, breathe, wave, comet, and even rainbow. Yes, that’s much closer to what I imagined when Google first showed off HiLight.

To be fair, Google has already said more functionality is coming, so HiLight clearly isn’t the finished product yet. And honestly, that’s what makes its current limitations even more frustrating because I can already see just how useful this light could eventually become.

Right now, though, Google had a genuinely fun idea and stopped a few steps too early. The setup is more complicated than it needs to be, Gemini has randomly stopped working with it on my phone, and a third-party app is already showing how much more HiLight can do. Give me those customization options directly in Settings, make them simple enough for anyone to figure out, and please get Gemini working consistently.

Do that, and HiLight could easily go from the Pixel 11 Pro feature that frustrates me the most to one of those Pixel features I’d genuinely miss if I switched phones.