As part of the November 2025 Feature Drop, Pixel VIPs picked up a pair of updates, led by prioritized notifications, that are now rolling out.
The VIPs (Google Contacts) homescreen widget now shows a crisis badge when a person’s address is facing flooding, wildfires, or other severe weather alerts. Opening the VIP panel shows more details, with this joining the birthday reminders badge.Â
The big update today is how message notifications from your Pixel VIPs are now prioritized. Instead of the usual message icon notification, you’ll see their profile avatar right in your Pixel’s status bar and always-on display (AOD). This really catches your eye (as intended) compared to monochrome icons.
On the lockscreen and notification shade, the corner app icon is surrounded in yellow for a literal highlight. This applies to apps like Google Messages and WhatsApp.
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These Pixel VIP prioritized notifications are available for Pixel 6 and above. Make sure you’re running the latest version of the app (1.0.825435921), though there’s a server-side component.
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