Google Contacts is getting a card-style visual redesign

In what seems like an effort to bring all of its apps into the same Material You design language (for once), Google is now updating its Contacts app to reflect this decision. To be clear, it already received this update last year, but today, it’s going a step further and beautifying it a bit more for consistency.

Looking at the image below, you’ll notice that the contact’s information is no longer plainly slapped on the background color, but instead is separated by a card-style design with a lighter color and rounded corners. The company has officially dubbed this the “Google Material Design update”, and you should have it now if you’re on version 3.51.388199234 of the app.

I’m all for visual updates, but I have to admit – Google Contacts is years behind other CRMs in terms of how much information you can add to individual entries and how flexible it can be. I did write last year about how it began evolving and becoming more useful in this way since it added the ability to input a contact’s local time, working hours, non-manager relationships, shared files, and more, but beyond that, you still can’t add last time contacted, and other useful fields.

Let me know in the comments whether or not you even use the app, or if you’ve already moved on to Hubspot or another CRM in its place. Google’s apps and services are always created in such a way that they provide the basics, and keep everything simple enough for the largest audience, but the trade-off is that power users can never really make the most of their data, so it is what it is. Still, Contacts, Keep, Tasks, and other productivity apps rarely see major updates, so I’ll take this as a win!