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Google Contacts can now backup local contacts, something it shockingly couldn’t before

At this point, most people have moved beyond paper contact books and just keep all of their friends numbers and information in their phone instead. Google Contacts does a great job of saving that information and, now, Google is finally making it possible to backup contacts that were created locally.

For the longest time, Google Contacts and most similar apps on Android have been able to sync your contacts through a Google account, carrier backup service, or other methods. However, that only took place at the time of creation. Create a contact locally by mistake? It’s gone if you reset that phone.

It’s pretty easy for that to create confusion and, frankly, is a huge pain if you want to batch upload a bunch of contacts from your phone. Just last night, ironically, I tried to do this with an in-law’s new Pixel and frankly, I’m not even sure if I did it right!

That’s why the latest Google Contacts update is such a breath of fresh air. As Android Police notes, Google Contacts is now rolling out an option that makes it possible to back up and sync all of the contacts locally stored on your device to your Google account. There’s no effort required here, simply toggle the feature on in the app’s settings or accept the option when it pops up on your device.

This feature is rolling out now to all Google Contacts users, though it may take some time to hit everyone’s device. Notably, on Pixel, Google doesn’t even allow the creation of local contacts which is probably part of the reason Contacts hasn’t previously supported this backup feature previously. On other devices, though, you can still create local contacts which is just begging for a nightmare if your phone breaks.

Back up your contacts people, please.

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