Google’s Pixel VIPs Feature Makes Your Favorite Contacts Feel Like Celebs

Google is rolling out a new exclusive feature called Pixel VIPs to select Pixel phones, allowing users to organize key contacts in a dedicated home screen widget that shows call history, messages (including WhatsApp), real-time locations, and birthday reminders. While it’s not officially announced yet and appears to be server-side enabled, Pixel VIPs could be formally introduced in the upcoming June 2025 Feature Drop.

You can designate contacts on your Android phone as favorites, which gives you quick access to the contacts you want to call or text. However, Google is giving Pixel users an exclusive new feature called Pixel VIPs, and the widget is rolling out to some lucky Pixel owners as we speak.

According to a couple of posts on Reddit, some lucky Pixel owners are discovering a new feature called Pixel VIPs. This isn’t new per se. The folks at Android Authority discovered it a couple of weeks ago. However, at that time, it was in testing. It was also initially assumed that it would be released alongside the Pixel 10.

But based on these Reddit posts, it looks like Google has decided to push it out to existing Pixel owners now. According to the description, this widget allows Pixel owners to consolidate some of their favorite contacts in one, easy-to-access place. Users can see information such as the last time they called or messaged. It also covers conversations you had with them on apps like WhatsApp. Users can also check real-time locations (if they are being shared), birthday reminders, and more.

This sounds like an upgraded or enhanced version of the favorite contacts feature on Android, not to mention an exclusive Pixel feature. That being said, as 9to5Google notes, the Pixel VIPs feature is a background service. It’s not an app that users launch, and Google doesn’t appear to be ready to launch the feature yet.

Still not officially live yet

The publication notes that even after installing the latest update, nothing is live yet. This means that it’s probably server-side enabled, which Google hasn’t gotten around to. If you own a Pixel phone, ensure you run a stable Android 15 build. It has been suggested that this might not work if your phone has the Android 16 beta installed.

Google themselves haven’t announced anything yet. However, there is speculation that it could be officially revealed later today as part of the June 2025 Feature Drop for Pixel phones. So, if you own a Pixel device and think that this could be a nifty widget for your home screen, you’ll want to keep an eye out for it when it goes live.