Google makes it pretty easy to house all of your contacts in a single location, but sometimes you’ll still shoot emails off to people you don’t have saved or vice versa. Now, Google is making it easier to track down “other” contacts with the latest update to Google Contacts for Android.
Historically a straightforward application, the default Contacts app on Android is a bit buggy after its latest update. Opening people in Google Contacts 3.15 is remarkably slow and takes a few seconds.
In an effort to make it easier for users to input new numbers for contacts, Google Contacts is rolling out a new feature that’s potentially based on Android Slices. The new half-screen panel offers a lot of functionality without pulling you out of the app. Here’s what it does.
Google Contacts last year was one of the first apps to implement a dark theme on Android. Version 3.5.7 today adds a better “Choose theme” switcher in settings that is more apparent to the user and provides additional granularity.
Since I/O 2018, the Google Material Theme has rolled out to many first-party apps, with major ones like Gmail for Android just coming aboard. Many of the newer redesigns feature a faster account switcher, with Google Contacts now the latest to adopt this UI element.
Following last week’s encouragement that apps adopt dark themes to conserve battery life, Google Contacts is the latest Android client to gain one. In recent weeks, the company has been updating its communication apps, with Google Phone’s dark look already announced and in-development.
Google Contacts has been building out a new design for the past couple of years, and today the company announced that the old version of the interface would be deprecated in favor of the new one. At the same time, though, it looks like a Material Theme redesign is hitting Contacts, catching it up to Gmail and other Google apps.
Google has been previewing a new design for Google Contacts on the web since 2015, but always retained the previous online version until feature parity. With that milestone now achieved, Google will deprecate the old Google Contacts in February of 2019.
The latest update for Google Contacts is rolling out today with a Material Theme for the Android client. The app’s underlying organization is unchanged with the redesign, but various new elements like Google Sans and white backgrounds are now in use.
For the most part, the redesigned Gmail that launched in April maintained feature parity with the previous iteration. However, one minor grievance did emerge over the lack of a Google Contacts shortcut. This was an intentional change with Google now removing the Contacts shortcut and experience from legacy Gmail.
For most people, contact management is a constant struggle from adding new ones to efficiently organizing and filling out information. In recent releases, Google Contacts added various smarts to help, with a teardown now revealing work on more accurate suggestions and a widget in version 2.7.
Google’s Duo app has been improving a lot in the past several months, and that includes how it integrates with the rest of the Android ecosystem. Now, we’re finding out that Google has even deeper integration coming, and it’s looking pretty awesome…
The latest update to Google Contacts has been rolling out for several weeks now, but Google today detailed all the new features. Version 2.2 brings back large contact photos, adds action buttons, and a quick way to sort contacts by labels.
Following the release of Google Contacts for most Android devices earlier today, more people than ever now have access to the app. After digging into the latest version of Google Contacts, we managed to enable a couple unreleased features in the latest version that could make managing your contacts with it even easier than it already is…
One of the highlights for Pixel and Nexus phones is having access to all of the latest and greatest services from Google. Some of these features are limited to Google’s own phones, and while the Google Contacts app was previously one of those, that’s now thankfully changing.
Google Contacts for Android received its last major update in August, with the web app only reaching visual parity earlier this year. Version 2.0 of the mobile app is now rolling out with a number of changes, including a better account switcher and a redesigned people view.
Last year, Google Contacts on Android received a major redesign that introduced a new interface and added several features. In contrast, the web version has been languishing for years with Google’s pre-Material Design style. Today, a significant revamp brings it to visual and feature parity.
With Google, it’s hit or miss when it comes to how the company designs its apps. It’s also common that a product of Google’s such as Contacts might have a feature on one platform but not on another. With this update to its stock Contacts app, however, users gain the ability to add labels and remove duplicate contacts right from our device.
Despite being announced over a year ago, the revamped Google Contacts web app remains in preview and is still lacking some legacy features. A new feature rolling out today, however, will list verified business information from Google Maps directly in a contact.
Despite being announced over a year ago, the revamped Google Contacts still remains a preview. An update to the web app today adds the ability to import contacts from a variety of popular third-party services.
Google is getting ready to push out the latest update for Google Glass—numbered XE 20.1—and with it is coming some pretty major changes to how contacts are handled, notably allowing users to access all contacts by voice via Google Contacts. Also included in this update is the ability to actually choose which method you would like to use when sending a contact a message—Hangouts, email, or SMS.
Your entire phone address book is now available on Glass thanks to Google Contacts. You can access 20 of your most recent and starred contacts by voice and the rest are just a swipe away. Starring a contact is really easy. Just find them in your phone and click the star. If the star is filled in, then the contact has been favorited.
Google has announced a new feature for enterprise users of Google Apps: the ability for assistants and other team members to search for particular people in their boss’s contacts list.
Contacts delegation allows enterprise users to delegate full access to the contacts in their “My Contacts” group without granting access to their mail or anything else in their accounts. […]
To save users time when locating specific delegated contacts, we’ve now added search functionality. Delegates can search delegator contacts by selecting the delegator contact group in the navigation pane, and then searching.
It’s not the most exciting of new features, but is one of those small things that can make a worthwhile difference to a PA who might have to contact a dozen or more people a day – and every improvement like that helps Google build its case for broader enterprise adoption of Google Apps.
Basically, not only is Google keeping CalDAV open, but making CardDAV available to everyone too: http://t.co/W5SBcnLvrA
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 5, 2013
Back in March, Google made the announcement that it would be shutting down its CalDAV API, which allows developers to fetch Google calendar data, to the public and restricting it to only to whitelisted developers. Today the company has reversed its decision and announced on its Developers Blog that the API will continue to be available to the public.
On top of that announcement, Google is making CardDAV, the open protocol for syncing Google contacts that it introduced last year, available to everyone starting today:
In response to those requests, we are keeping the CalDAV API public. And in the spirit of openness, today we’re also making CardDAV – an open standard for accessing contact information across the web –available to everyone for the first time.
Google outlined some other updates to the APIs:
Both of these APIs are getting other updates as well:
In addition, the CalDAV API now has a new endpoint:
https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2
Google+ now displays Google Contacts data in friends’ profiles.
“Many of you, like me, use Google Contacts to manage your personal address book. If that’s the case, then starting today we’ll include this contact info on your friends’ Google+ profiles — for your eyes only, of course,” announced Product Manager Sean Purcell on Google+.
Thus, Gmail and Android users’ Google Contacts are now integrated with the social network. For example: If a coworker has a new number recently stored in Google Contacts, it will automatically sync with Google+ in the “Details from Google Contacts” section. Purcell also provided a visual example of the new feature in the above image.
