The Best Address Book App for iOS Doesn't Exist

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Posted by Luhmann
Mar 12, 2019 at 05:54 AM

I totally endorse the central message of this Lifehacker article from last year:

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-address-book-app-for-ios-doesnt-exist-1828832162

Curious if list members with iPhones have come up with any solutions that don’t involve paying a monthly subscription fee?

Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 12, 2019 at 11:55 AM

Creating your own with TapForms, would be my advice (no subscription, macOS/iOS support)

Posted by satis
Mar 13, 2019 at 01:49 PM

MadaboutDana wrote:
Creating your own with TapForms, would be my advice (no subscription,
>macOS/iOS support)

TapForms would be great if there were a way to sync fields to/from Contacts to update those fields in Contacts that are duplicated.

Posted by Luhmann
Mar 20, 2019 at 01:14 PM

So after spending a few weeks on this, trying various solutions I settled on .... Google Keep

First of all, I found that database style apps, such as TapForms or AirTable, etc. are not ideal. One of the problems with standard address book apps is precisely the limitations of the database format. A note app which can handle pictures and tags is much better.

I wanted something which could do OCR and had tagging. This ruled out Apple Notes (neither) and Bear (no OCR). And I wanted to be able to add multiple images first and then do OCR later, which I found worked better with Google Keep than with Evernote. There are a few other UX quibbles which led me to use GK instead of Evernote, but I’m mostly happy with the result. I can snap a picture of a business card and pull the text to the card. And if the card is bilingual with one language on each side (as is common in East Asia) it will pull text from both sides. (Evernote would insist on creating separate contact entries for each side of the card!) Another nice feature is the ability to automatically generate web previews for any URL.

Wishlist: markdown, faster sync with iOS, a search option for the tag list, the ability to easily link to individual notes across platforms, and the ability to set reminders which are based on the completion date rather than the calendar date.

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