Google Contacts will soon offer to notify you when it’s someone’s birthday

In the latest version of Google Contacts, the company is preparing a new way to get notified when it’s a friend or family member’s birthday.

About APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in the case that they do ship. With that in mind, read on.

In recent years, Google has built up a few different ways to stay more connected with the people in your life, particularly in regards to remembering their birthdays. Google Messages, for example, will elevate a conversation in your inbox and nudge you to remember that it’s their birthday. Conversely, Messages will also take notice of “happy birthday” messages and ask if you want to save that person’s birthday in their contact info. You’ll also occasionally see birthdays in Android’s Conversations widget.

All of these features are powered by Google Contacts, which helpfully syncs information about your friends and family members across devices and enables useful features across Google’s ecosystem.

Now it seems Google Contacts is preparing another way to remind you to stay in touch with your friends on their birthday. The new feature is simply dubbed “birthday notifications” and allows you to pick friends and family members whose birthdays you want to be alerted to. We’ve forcibly enabled Google Contacts’ birthday notifications, as seen below:

For any contact that has a birthday listed, the overflow menu in the top-right will include a new “Add birthday notification” option. Additionally, if someone’s birthday is coming up soon, the reminder included on their contact page will also offer an “Add notification” button.

For now, there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn the notifications on for all of your contacts at once to replace the incredibly useful birthday reminders that apps like Facebook offer. Instead, you have to turn them on individually for each person. At the very least, your preference for these notifications will sync between devices.

Of course, also unlike any good social media app, one has to manually enter birthdays into Google Contacts for any of this to be useful. If only there was some Google-owned social media app where you could connect with friends and perhaps have their profile information automatically sync with Google Contacts. Could you imagine?

Thanks to JEB Decompiler, from which some APK Insight teardowns benefit.