Google Contacts gets a much-needed redesign and cool new features

Google has announced an update to the web version of Google Contacts. It’s an app that has long been hidden inside of Gmail and has never gotten the attention it deserved, but that’s changing with today’s announcement.

The most obvious change is a Material Design user interface that is in line with their vision of a more beautiful internet. No secrets or surprises there. The new functionality is what has us most excited, though.

For starters, Google has made it easier to find and manage duplicate contacts. They say they’ve built the engine from the ground up to more effectively and accurately identify duplicates, and they make it quite easy to either delete or combine entries with one click of a button.

They’ve also made a change where recent meetings and conversations with a certain contact will now show up on their page. It’s a nice and natural way to reference an encounter without having to get your hands messy with a search. Finally, when it can, Google Contacts will use Google+ profile information to automatically keep your contacts up to date (and anything it can’t catch you can always find yourself).

These changes won’t be available from within Gmail just yet, but you can get a preview by heading right here. Be sure to bookmark it for easy access while we await its integration into Gmail and (hopefully) Inbox by Gmail.

[via Google]

You can now customize snooze times in Inbox by Gmail (and Google finally added a Contacts button)

Google has published a quick update for Inbox by Gmail that makes a small, but important tweak: you can now customize your “morning” and “evening” times for snoozing email. The app originally sets 7:00am and 7:00pm for snooze times for everyone who downloads it, but that might not always be the most convenient (such as for yours truly, whose mornings unfortunately begin far before the sun rises at 7:00am).

If you’re not aware what snoozing in Inbox is, it’s a feature that lets you dismiss an email until a later time. The email will popup again at the time you specify as if the email just arrived in your inbox. It’s a very convenient tool that makes it tough for you to forget about an important or interesting email that you can’t read immediately.

Google says the latest change will go into effect automatically, so there’s no need to wait for an update from Google Play. It’s also obviously immediately present in the desktop website as well.

Google will ask you if you want to customize your snooze time the next time you go to snooze an email, and anything you snooze from there on will popup at your new time (even if you previously had an item snoozed before the update arrived). You’ll also be able to differentiate between morning and evening times, so your 6am wake up time doesn’t necessarily have to be matched by a 6pm evening time.

Oh, and one more thing: Google finally added a quick button to access Google Contacts on the desktop web from within Inbox. It’s about damn time.

[via Google]