For some reason, Google ships Pixel phones with a fairly barebones flashlight on board. While you can quickly turn it on and off with a Quick Settings widget or lock screen shortcut, there’s no way to manually adjust its brightness, with third-party apps being the only viable option.

We’ve learned on a couple of occasions that Google intends to fix this with a slider to adjust the brightness as needed. Looking into the freshly launched Android Canary 2510 release, the folks at Android Authority discovered a near-ready version of this slider, which features key changes compared to previous versions.

Potentially what the Android 16 flashlight strength controls could look like.
Credit: Nail Sadykov

An early version of the flashlight brightness slider

We’ve seen earlier implementations of this native flashlight experience leverage a Samsung-style horizontal brightness adjustment slider (pictured above). However, with this latest revision, we’re seeing a vertical slider, illustrated in the form of a flashlight. In this updated version, adjusting the brightness mimics the illumination of a conventional flashlight.

The functionality remains unchanged

This is solely a visual change, though, with no real difference in its capabilities compared to what we’ve seen in the under-development versions before. It’s more in line with what we see on Apple iPhones as well as OnePlus and Xiaomi devices. Meanwhile, Samsung Galaxy flagships have offered brightness adjustment sliders for a while now, albeit with a horizontal slider.

Now for the bad news. As Android Authority points out, there was no mention of this revamped flashlight slider on Android 16 QPR2 betas, which means it won’t be included with the stable version arriving in December.

This leaves the window open for Google to debut this updated flashlight in the Android 16 QPR3 release, with the beta phase yet to commence, and the stable version scheduled to be ready by March 2026. That’s quite a lot of waiting for a basic function like this.

In the meantime, though, users can download third-party apps like this one to enable the capability on their phones. Additionally, Google’s accessibility app, Magnifier, also provides a slider to adjust the flashlight’s brightness. While these are decent workarounds, a majority of users would undoubtedly appreciate a native solution, similar to those offered on Samsung or Apple’s phones.