Adamya Sharma / Android Authority
There aren’t many tasks the latest Android phones can’t assist with, which makes it all the stranger when you discover some fundamental functionality missing. This happened to me recently, when I finally got around to cleaning up my contacts list. The chore would be made a whole lot easier if I could sort my contacts by the date I added them, but I realized that this isn’t something you can do.
When this issue comes up online, people usually want to look up recent contacts, such as someone they added to their phone the week before, but whose name has since slipped their mind. I have almost the opposite problem. As someone who runs a longstanding pick-up soccer game, I find myself adding dozens of players to my list each year, some of whom have the same first names. Knowing the date they were added to my contacts would let me easily skip back a couple of years and purge the ones who have long since stopped playing.
Have you ever needed to sort your phone contacts by date added? 19 votes Yes 21 % No 79 %
If only it were that easy. Both the Samsung Phone app and Google Contacts app on my Galaxy S24 Plus don’t record this contact info, so it certainly isn’t something by which you can sort your list. It’s the same deal on my Google Pixel 8, and some Googling suggests it isn’t something that any flagship device offers as standard. This seems like a huge blind spot. The best you can do with the common apps is look into your call logs or messaging apps for clues, but it’s a messy approach and relies on you contacting each new addition soon after they were added.
After more investigation, I finally found a better (if imperfect) workaround.
The approximate workaround
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
Cursory research suggests that a perfect solution doesn’t exist, at least unless you’re a developer or are looking to start the record now. However, some little-known apps on the Play Store can offer assistance.
There are almost certainly more, but the two apps I found that came close to solving my problem are Quis and Recent Contacts. As well as by first and last name, both of these apps offer you the chance to sort contacts by date added.
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