Contacts on Android: Turn Saving Information On or Off

Contacts are one of the cornerstones of our phone. For some it is the most valuable and feared thing to lose, so having a backing from them is vital. However, sometimes the information that Google saves about these contacts and how they are suggested in certain services can be uncomfortable.

The auto-complete options also affect contacts. By default, our Android smartphone can store information that it will suggest to us in applications that we use frequently. In some Google services, we are shown contact suggestions, such as typing someone’s name in a new Gmail email. But we can control which people are suggested and saved as contacts.

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How to turn on or turn off contact suggestions

Before seeing how we can modify this function, it is important to know which people appear in these types of suggestions , in order to identify the origin. Our mobile will allow us to complete this contact information, but it did not come out of nowhere. The people featured in these suggestions are:

  • People who have been added to our contacts
  • People with whom we have interacted on Google services
  • People with whom content has been shared, such as a Drive document.
  • People who are part of events, groups or content that we are also part of, such as a shared Google Photos album.

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The option is activated by default, since Android considers it useful for the user. However, either because we want to have a further plus of privacy, or because at some point it has been deactivated, we are going to see how to access the function. What we will have to do is go to the Settings menu and enter the options of our Google account . Once inside, at the top, we touch on our personal information. Now in “Contacts”, we tap on “Contact suggestions”. Now we can activate or deactivate the option “Save the contact information of the people with whom you interact.”

With Gmail it’s different

These settings do not apply to Gmail. This means that if we want to disable the suggestions in this application , we must do it manually. For this we will have to enter this link and go down to the contact autocomplete settings. In the option “Create contacts for autocompletion”, we select the option to do it manually.