Friday, January 15, 2016

Interact: Better iOS Contact Management

David Sparks:

As I explained earlier, I’d pretty much given up on managing Contact groups on iOS. Interact fixes that. I am now able to add, edit, and delete groups on my iPad and and iPhone and (even better) then see them appear nicely organized when I returned to my Mac. Note that this only works in the default system account and it must be using the vCard protocol. (iCloud and Google both work but if you have more than one account, it will only work in your primary account.) Since I manage all contacts in one iCloud account, I had no problem but this could be a limitation if you use more than one service.

In addition to adding, removing, and editing groups, you can also add and remove group members. Just select a group and then tap on the Add Contacts to Group button and you are off to the races. It was all very intuitive and, as a Beta testor, I was witness to the hard work the developer went through to make it as easy as possible for users. For instance, to remove a member from the group, just tap on the “X” button next to their name.

A nice touch is the ability to see all of the groups a specific contact belongs to.

This last bit is not even possible in the Mac Contacts app.

Update (2016-01-16): Dr. Drang:

Let’s say you got an email from a new client whose contact info is in a signature block but who, unfortunately, doesn’t include a link to a vCard. Instead of laboriously typing the bits of information one at a time into their respective fields, with Interact you can swipe through the entire signature block, copy it, and paste it into Interact’s Contact Scratchpad. Interact will parse the text and create a new contact entry for you with little or no extra effort on your part.

4 Comments RSS · Twitter

"This last bit is not even possible in the Mac Contacts app."

Reason #2,437 why Snowy rocks...

Michael, if you click on a contact in Mac app and then tap option key the associated groups will highlight. Been that way since dawn of time. Very obscure.

"Michael, if you click on a contact in Mac app and then tap option key the associated groups will highlight. Been that way since dawn of time. Very obscure."

Yup. That's how it works in Snowy. Figured Michael was saying it had been lost in all the post-Snowy regressions. But I guess not. Now only 2,436 reasons why Snowy rocks.

@John Thanks. I was not aware of that. I prefer the checkbox interface, though.

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