Nexus 5X/6P Mod Introduces Pixel Home Button Animation

There is lots to love about the Pixel and Pixel XL, from the stellar camera to the clean build with the use of premium materials, but there’s likely no doubt that the best part of the Pixel phone experience is the software. Both phones are running Android 7.1 Nougat and do come with a handful of things that are exclusive, but that doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. Take for instance the home button animation of the Pixel and Pixel XL. The Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P can both get access to this home button animation by simply flashing a zip file.

Worth noting, of course, is that this is only meant for the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, so anyone with a different type of device would not be recommended to try flashing the same file. Since you have to flash the ZIP file and you can’t install it with the use of an APK, that also means you’re Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P will need to have a custom recovery installed, or you can apply the home button animation mod manually, with instructions on how to do so from the source.

Both Nexus phones will need to have stock Android 7.1 Nougat installed for the animation to work, so make sure that your device is running on the latest version of stock software before continuing with the installation. If you’re flashing the file using a custom recovery, the one mentioned is TWRP, and it’s unclear if this works with any other custom recovery options, so you’ll probably want to stick with TWRP on this one. Naturally, with any sort of software modification to phones like this, it’s important to make sure that you do a full backup of your firmware on the phone before you start the flashing anything to the device. This way if something goes wrong or doesn’t quite go as planned, then you can simply revert back to the backup of older firmware before you tried flashing the home button animation mod. It’s also not a bad idea to make sure that you have a full battery or close to a full battery during these sorts of situations, although with a flashable zip for a simple mod it shouldn’t take too long to complete. This wouldn’t be the first feature from the Pixel phones that we’ve seen come to the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, as an app called Fingerprint Quick Action opened up the fingerprint scanner gestures for both phones.