Group Android Contacts by Label

Project Status: Dream Came True
Original Post: Android to bring back contact groups

That's right, contact groups are back for Android!

As of version number 1.5.16 of Google's Contacts app you now have the option to organize your contacts by use of labels. If you already had contact groups setup in your Gmail account, then you will be happy to know that those will automatically start working as label groups in your Contacts app.

How to label my contacts?

It's super easy to add grouping labels to your existing contacts. If you want to add labels from your Contacts app then follow these steps:

1. Open the Contacts app.
2. Locate the contact you would like to label.
3. Touch the edit icon in the top right corner.
   (Having problems finding the edit icon? Check out this post to learn more about fixing this issue)
4. Scroll to the bottom and touch the "More fields" link
5. Scroll to the very bottom and you will see the option to select one or more labels for this contact.

Where do I find my groups once I am using labels?

To quickly narrow your contacts list down to a smaller group you can select a label to view only contacts with that label attached to them. Here's how:

1. Open the Contacts app.
2. Touch the hamburger menu in the top left corner
   ("Hamburger menu" is a term to describe the icon which is made up of three horizontal lines.)
3. Here you should see a list of existing labels for your account.
4. Touch any label to select it and your list of contacts will be narrowed to only those using this label.

Now what?

Now that contact groups came back maybe they can start working on one of the other feature requests I was hoping for which is group ringtones. The idea for group ringtones became obsolete once they dropped groups altogether but now I have hopes for it again.

Android to bring back contact groups

Project Status: Dream Came True
Update: Group Android Contacts by Label

Are your contact groups missing on Android? Yeah, mine too. Ever since Lollipop when they decided to no longer include contact groups. Simple groups like family and coworkers. Groups that are already in your Gmail contacts which use to always show up automatically on Android devices.

I'm glad to say, and with a big thanks to everyone that has been going to the product forums to talk to the developers, that Android should soon see group contacts make a come back. That's according to a project member's reply to what was marked as a closed issue.

Here's exactly what that project member said:

Post by Project Member on  Jun 30, 2016
"Good news guys, This feature will be back again soon, fixed from the development team. and additional issues will be tracked further. Still don't have info on which build and version will the fix goes in. will update this tracker as and when we get more info."

So don't hold your breath. Could be a while still, who really knows, but it's great to hear that they are working on it.

Once contact groups come back maybe they can start working on one of the other feature requests I was hoping for which is group ringtones. The idea for group ringtones became obsolete once they dropped groups altogether but now I have hopes for it again.

Android Group Ringtones - Now Obsolete

Project Status: Losing Hope
View Original Post: Android Group Ringtones
How you can help: Star this topic on the Android issue tracker

This is an update to the very popular feature request for Android to add group ringtones. Unfortunately no one is happy to hear this news.

According to Google's Issue tracker the suggestion to have an option to choose group ringtones on Android is now considered "obsolete." The reason they consider this obsolete is because as of Lollipop they moved to a new "Contacts" app instead of the old "People" app. Sadly in this new app for contacts the ability to view or use your contact groups has been removed.

Assuming you have your phone setup with a Gmail account linked to it, you can still log into your Gmail account through a web page and go to your contacts groups. None of those groups however will appear on your phone as they used to.

So as you can see; without the ability to have contact groups, the request to add group ringtones is no longer possible for Android to implement. Which is why they consider this feature request to be obsolete.

As far as I am concerned this is a step backward for the Android platform. There must be some pretty strong and valid reasons why the great people over at Google chose to remove contact groups from Android, but I don't know what they are. It will be interesting to see how things develop from this point.

If you are one of the many people that miss the contact groups check out this post on the issue tracker and either add a comment or star the issue. The more stars an issue gets the more likely the development team over at Google is to take action. Hopefully that action will be bringing back group contacts. Nearly seven hundred people have starred the issue as of the date of this post. Lots of issues on this tracker only gain a handful of stars so to gain this many stars actually places this item in the top ten open issues. I can only image that Google will have to take some action on this soon, maybe they have something better in the works than what we had before.

In the meantime; there are several apps in the play store which allow you to access your groups, some even let you set group ringtones. I just wish that Google would have both of these features built in.

Android Group Ringtones

Project Status: Feature Request
Updated here: Android Group Ringtones - Now Obsolete
How you can help: Star this topic on the Android issue tracker

Sure there are a few apps in the play store which provide options to set customized ringtones for contact groups and you can find them here if that is what you are looking for, but what about the ability to do this directly from the stock install of Android?

As of the today, with the current version of Android (4.2.2) this is not an option. However; it would be super easy for the Android development team to tack this onto the next version of Android. So here's to hoping that by Android 5.0 this feature exists right out of the box.

Check out this update, but you aren't going to be happy..
Update: Android Group Ringtones - Now Obsolete

When a contact is selected there are options to: edit, share, delete, set ringtone, send all calls to voicemail and place on home screen. Select a group of contacts and the only options are to edit which contacts are in the group or to delete the whole group.

What I'm suggesting here is that all of these same contact options become available for contact groups as well.

Let's take a moment and break this down for each new element that this feature includes:

Share

I don't use the "share" feature for contact data myself, but seeing as many users would; I don't see why they wouldn't also want the ability to share a group of contact data.

All calls to voicemail

I use this option on individual contacts quite a bit. Imagine though having a group of "blocked" contacts that always go to voicemail, or when going on vacation being able to ignore all work calls with one easy click.

Place on Home screen

Placing a single contact on the home screen already works great by making a shortcut to that contact. Placing a group of contacts on the home screen should create a folder containing a shortcut to each contact in the group, and of course this folder should update automatically as the group members change over time.

Set ringtone

I've used Android since the first version and I've waited forever for groups to show up at all. Now that they have I'm sure it's only a matter of time until being able to set a ringtone for the entire group will become an option. I would love to know if it's my family, friends or coworkers calling before I ever pull my phone out of my pocket.

The priority levels for setting ringtones should go as follows:

• Highest priority - a ringtone set for an individual contact
• Medium priority - a ringtone set for a group of contacts
• Lowest priority - the default ringtone

Then the only complicated part left to solve is to let users prioritize their groups. This is needed when a contact resides in multiple groups. It's necessary to define which group out ranks another and takes priority as the selected ringtone.

Do you want to help make it happen? Go to this page and star the post (which is issue 5146). The more stars this issue gets the more likely the Android development team will consider making this feature request a reality.

Update: As of Android Version 4.4.2 this is still not a feature.