Google Contacts is not an app that you would associate with frequent changes or updates. But that hasn’t been the case over the past few weeks. We learned last month that an upcoming redesign for the app would make some sweeping changes, like removing the hamburger menu, while another update sought to unclutter individual contact pages. It now looks like some other changes are on the horizon, with a new leak giving us a glimpse of what’s to come.
First things first, there’s now a new Organize tab in the navigation bar, replacing Fix & manage. Thankfully, all the contents of Fix & manage have been relocated to the newly created tab. The information was revealed by reputed leaker AssembleDebug, who credits the editor of the Google News Telegram channel, Nail Sadykov, with discovering the flag that enabled this redesign.
These changes are part of Google Contacts version 4.27, though AssembleDebug claims it isn’t widely available just yet. One big noticeable change with this new Organize tab is the removal of the large grid of buttons for Merge & fix, Reminders, etc, which are now available in a vertical list. Meanwhile, Organize is effectively split into two sections — Google and This device — as shown above.
The current Fix & manage tab in Google Contacts
The section titled Google provides options related to your Google account, like birthday reminders for contacts or restoring a contact from trash, whereas This device pertains to device-specific changes like SIM management, importing or exporting contacts from a file, and so on. We don’t expect this redesign to roll out anytime soon, given that it’s still hidden behind a flag.
In another tweet, AssembleDebug revealed a change to the Edit contact page, which helps in making it less cluttered. There is an Add fields option at the bottom, which opens the Choose fields to add box with options for Name, Phonetic pronunciation, and Other names andtitles.
By contrast, the current implementation of the Edit contact page requires a bit of scrolling through fields like Company, Work phone, etc, before finding the More fields button at the bottom. This opens up a whole new set of fields, including some you may not be looking for. AssembleDebug didn’t specify if this revamped Edit contact page is part of Google Contacts version 4.27. In any case, these two design changes should be live imminently, and we hope Google won’t make us wait too long.
Maybe if we start telling people the brain is an app they will start using it!
