With two Google apps reminding, it’s unlikely you’ll miss someone’s special day
In the last few months, Google has invested a lot of development efforts into the Contacts app to ensure it stays up to date with features like a Material You widget and support for contact addition from other Workspace apps on the web. The Contacts app also picked up a new Highlights tab in December last year, which now has a new section showing upcoming events like birthdays for saved contacts.
Most people use the Phone app by Google, but those who frequent the Contacts app instead would have noticed the addition of the Highlights tab in the bottom bar. It shows your favorite contacts up top and your recently dialed or added numbers in another section underneath. 9to5Google reports that in version 4.2 of the Contacts app, a new section called For You has been squeezed between the existing ones. It shows you cards with the approaching birthdays of your saved contacts. Each card has quick action buttons to call or text that contact.
The new section seems to overlap with Assistant’s features which also remind you of the contact’s birthdays. However, we could perceive this move as Google transforming the Contacts app into a hub for information about everyone you know. Indirectly corroborating this theory, 9to5Google also reports receiving an in-app survey, including a question about additions users would like to see in the Highlights tab. Meanwhile, Google Calendar still doesn’t allow setting dedicated birthday reminders for contacts.
If you aren’t seeing this fresh addition in the Highlights tab of v4.2 of the Contacts app, it could be because you didn’t save birthdays for many contacts. The feature also appears to be rolling out gradually, and could be tied to a server-side update, so we suggest updating to the latest version from the Play Store and then waiting it out.
