How to Organize Your Contacts on Any Android Device

It’s entirely natural that you have a long list of contacts on your Android phone. You have contacts from work, family, friends, acquaintances, etc. Having all those different types of contacts can turn into a real mess if you don’t organize them properly. Here are some ways to better organize your contacts on your Android phone.

How to See Only Specific Contacts

You can easily organize your contacts by using the Contacts app. This is a great option if you’re running low on storage and can’t install any more apps.

Open the Contacts app and tap on the menu on the top right.

Tap on the “Customize view” option and choose what type of contacts you want.

If you have more than one Google account and want to view contacts from those accounts, tap on the logo of the first letter of your account’s name displayed on the top-right of the screen. Then you can add and manage your other Google accounts and view those contacts.

You can also view contacts from all the apps you’ve installed on your phone that have contacts integration. To manage those contacts, tap on the hamburger menu located at the top left in the Contacts app.

After selecting Settings, you will be sent to the Settings menu, where you need to select the Accounts option.

Here you can view and manage all the apps installed on your phone with contacts integration.

How to Merge Duplicate Contacts

A reason your contact list is so long is that you may have one friend with various entries. For example, one entry could be their current email address, and old email address, etc.

To merge all the entries you have of the same person, open the Contacts app and tap on the hamburger menu located at the top left and select the “Merge and fix” option.

Here you can see all duplicate contacts on your phone. If there are any, you can merge them one by one or merge all at once by simply tapping on “Merge” or “Merge all” options.

Organize Your Contacts by First or Last Name (Surname)

There’s really no right or wrong way to have your contacts displayed. They can either appear by their first or last name (surname), and that’s something you can easily do in the stock Contacts app.

Just like the other organizing methods, go to Settings, and under the Display section, you’ll see the “Sort by” option. Tap on it, and a small pop-up window will let you choose to organize by first or last name.

Even though you might have John Smith under “J,” you’ll see the last name (Surname) first, despite it being under your “J” contacts. You can also choose Name format, but all that does is add a comma and places the name either by first name and then the last or vice versa.

Organize Your Contacts into Labels

You want to call a co-worker, but first you have to find the contact in the sea of contacts you have. You might only have five contacts that are from work on your phone, so it would be a lot easier if you had them in a separate Label.

You can do that by opening the Contacts app and tapping on the hamburger menu located at the top left. If you created any Labels, you should see them there.