Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – For better and for worse, Google Contacts is not a complicated CMS. Its power is in its simplicity, but that also means that it’s lacking many features professional businessmen and women have come to expect from tools like Hubspot and other similar services.
One thing Google Contacts has not done very well in the past is letting you create and modify contacts on the fly, but that’s all changing with today’s Google Workspace Update. The tech giant has now added full-fledged functionality for creating and editing your relationships in its famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) sidebar which appears across many Google services!
As you can see in the GIF above, popping open the sidebar from Gmail, Google Calendar and so on will show either Google Tasks, Keep notes, Calendar events, and so on over on the right side of your screen. Contacts were pretty much always able to be called up here as well, but just in a read-only state.
Now, you can select a contact and tap the pencil icon to begin making changes to it. Choosing the blue “Save” button in the bottom right will commit those changes to Contacts on the web. Essentially, this is the full web app scrunched down to a side panel for quick access and nothing more.
That also means there’s a “+ Create contact” button at the very top of your list of people where you can spin up an entirely new contact card with ease. I’m sure Google has other plans for this in the future and how contact creation interplays with Gmail, Calendar, and other services, but we’ll have to wait and see.
For now, the rollout of this new feature has already begun, and both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domain owners in Google Workspace will see it appear for them over the next two weeks. In addition to everyone with Workspace and legacy G Suite licenses, everyone with a personal Google Account will also gain access to Contact creation and editing in the sidebar!
SUBSCRIBE TO UPSTREAM
Get Chrome Unboxed delivered straight to your inbox
Upstream is our flagship, curated newsletter with the top stories, most click-worthy deals, giveaways, and trending articles from Chrome Unboxed sent directly to your inbox a few times a week. Join 31,000+ subscribers.
