TimelineContacts
TimelineContacts is an Android app for managing contacts. The twist is that it remembers when a person changed phone numbers or addresses, and keeps it in a history, either as customized labels (so they are still identified when scrolling through your messages) or as XML text at the bottom of the contact note.
Installation
Android 4 (API 14) is the minimum, Android 10 (API 29) the maximum tested version. Development status is pre-alpha. Compile and install at your own risk. There is no F-Droid release at the moment, but you can have an APK to sideload.
Or as a fellow developer, you can compile from source:
git clone git://
Documentation
Android contact apps are hard to get right, because "one" contact is aggregated from multiple partial contacts (e.g. from DAVx, Google, Active Directory and other accounts).
Since TimelineContacts is my personal toy, a vertical entry on the right shows the "raw" contact id, while the name (which has to be the same over accounts) shows the "unified" contact id.
A contact is displayed in read-only mode. If you want to change something, swipe right on it, and a dialog will open. You can change the account an entry belongs to; change labels on phones, emails and addresses; and copy vs. move, or delete, an entry that way. This will feel very developer-y, and very powerful. Deleting the name deletes the contact. Nothing for rookies here :)
License
TimelineContacts is GPL'd open source software, which means it is and will always remain free, and also means that if you build upon it, you have to open source your result too.
Also, it has to be said that here are absolutely no guarantees on this. In the unlikely event that the software crashes your phone, your life and your bank account, it is still your own fault.
And now?
Checkout, run, tell me how it went at megid at
sourceforge.net. See if a contact app in "developer
style" is something for you :)
