Latest build (1.1.0, build 19)

Signed with the HiLight Studio release certificate. Installing over a build signed by another identity needs one uninstall first.

SHA-256 725455765a831c403edb3c67f6f30e62eb42d562fb793e5fac3790d6897e9a0f

HiLight Studio 1.1.0

Drive the eight-LED HiLight array on a Pixel 11 Pro from your own notifications, apps and calls.

This release sets the app up entirely from the phone, adds rules for incoming and connected calls, and fixes three ways a rule could silently never fire.

New: set up entirely on the phone

Every other way of reaching these LEDs asks for a computer with adb, or for Shizuku to be installed and started. HiLight now pairs with the phone's own Wireless debugging service and starts its renderer itself.

No computer. No companion app. No root. You enable Wireless debugging once, and the app does the rest, including re-attaching itself after a reboot.

The pairing code is entered from a reply notification, so Android's pairing dialog can stay open while you send it. Shizuku and the two-command ADB flow still work if you prefer them.

New: call rules

The array can now light while the phone rings, and differently once you answer. Two separate rules, so a glance tells you which one you are looking at without picking the phone up.

Fixed

• "While open" rules never fired. The app needs Usage access to see which app is in front, and it never checked whether it had it. The watcher polled once a second and had every single query rejected, forever, while the Apps tab showed a healthy rule. It now asks for the access where you make the rule, and refuses to start a watcher that cannot work.
• "While open" rules went dark after 30 seconds even with the app still open, because the renderer treated a hold with no duration as a 30-second alert. It now holds until the app is left.
• The rule survived a reboot but the watcher did not. Nothing restarted it after a reboot, a force-stop, or turning HiLight off and on, so a rule stayed dead until you toggled it by hand.
• "On notification" rules never fired, and nothing said why. Notification access was reported by matching your package name anywhere inside the system's listener list, so an unrelated app with a similar name could make the app report "granted" while the listener was off. The Apps tab now says when the access is missing, next to the rule that needs it.
• The eight LEDs animated out of step. Frames were pushed at exactly the hardware's minimum update period, and the jitter around it meant roughly one frame in nine never reached the array — unevenly, because the lights are written in sequence and each rate-limits on its own. The frame period is now derived from what the hardware reports, and holds steady.
• One LED could stay lit after an alert ended. The array was blanked with a single frame and the session was handed back on the same tick, so a light that dropped that one frame kept the alert's last colour with nothing left to correct it.
• Chase, comet and wave assumed the LEDs enumerate in physical order. They happen to, on the launch devices. Nothing promised that.

New: French

The app is in English, French and Japanese, selectable per app from Android's own language settings, without changing the language of the phone.

From upstream

This release also carries the work of DhananjayBhosale/hilight-studio v1.0.5: per-contact rules, which give one person or one chat a colour of their own; a notification inspector that shows what HiLight reads from each notification, so a rule that will not fire can be explained; and the Japanese translation.

Update

Download HiLight-Studio-v1.1.0-experimental.apk below and install it over your current version. Your rules, presets and pairing are kept.

If you are coming from v1.0.3 or an older debug-signed build, uninstall once first: the signing certificates are different.

Verify what you downloaded

sha256sum -c HiLight-Studio-v1.1.0-experimental.apk.sha256

Built and signed by the workflow in this repository, from the commit this release names, never on a laptop. The certificate is printed in the build log.

What you should know

• Wireless debugging is still required, once. Android declares the permission these LEDs need as signature|privileged: it cannot be granted from Settings, and pm grant refuses it. A process owned by the shell UID is the only route open to an installed app, and the debug service is the only door to one. What this release removes is the computer, not the debugging.
• The renderer stops at every reboot. The app reconnects on its own if Wireless debugging is still on. If it is off, the array stays dark until you turn it back on.
• The array may only be lit for half of any ten-minute window. That is a hardware protection, not a bug. A long call held lit the whole time spends it, and later rules stay dark until the window rolls over. The Apps tab now says so rather than failing silently.
• The phone has its own HiLight animation for calls. At equal priority the two interleave and the result looks like neither. Raise Session priority in Setup, or turn the phone's own HiLight off.
• Play Protect may warn about a sideloaded app that uses notification access.
• Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL and Pro Fold only, on Android 17. Experimental, and nobody has audited this.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.