What you need to know
- Google has been making small tweaks to many of its first-party apps, and Google Contacts is the latest one to get a slight redesign.
- Google Contacts no longer features a navigation drawer, and it is now replaced with a singular dropdown menu, a label picker, and a filtering button.
- Separately, there's a new page for creating and managing custom ringtones under the "Fix & manage" tab.
Google is making visual user-interface changes to the Google Contacts app on Android, removing the navigation drawer and adding a new page for custom ringtones. The minor redesign makes it easier to sort, label, and filter contacts in the Google Contacts app. It's available now with version 4.27.26 of the app, but you may need to restart the app in order for the redesign to take effect.
Navigation drawers are on the way out across many of Google's first-party apps, and now that includes Google Contacts. Instead of the drawer, there are three main toggles available. There's a dropdown menu under the search bar that lets you change views. You can see all your contacts at once, view contacts tied to a specific Google account, or create custom views.
To the left of the new dropdown menu are two toggles. There's a label picker that lets you create new labels or select existing ones, and a filtering button that makes it possible to separate phone contacts, email contacts, and companies. Generally, the functionality here isn't new, it's just in a different place. Instead of the hamburger menu icon, there's a search icon at the top of Google Contacts' main tab.
Separately, Google is introducing a new page for creating and managing custom ringtones in the Google Contacts app. It's found in the Fix and manage tab, under the Other tools section. After tapping the Contact ringtones option in the list, you'll be greeted with the new page. You can use this tool to give each contact in the Google Contacts app its own unique ringtone.
"Add a custom ringtone to individual contacts to help you recognize who's calling," the page explains. "To manage the default ringtone for this device, visit Settings."
Both changes are rolling out now in the Google Contacts app following a server-side update. Make sure your Google Contacts app is version 4.27 or higher for good measure, and then restart it to see the new changes. The redesign joins other recent updates to Google Contacts, such as live location for contacts.
