Flock pulls in "Other Contacts" from Google

[phipolis]

If I configure flock and wait for it to sync, I immediately notice many new entries in my phone's address book. These new contacts represent people I have emailed in the past without adding to my contact list. Google shows these on the Contacts pane of the Gmail web interface under "Other Contacts". Google contacts sync omits them, but Flock seems to grab all of these and insert them into my local contacts. I don't want that!

Flock 0.7.7 on Nexus 5 / CyanogenMod 11 / Android 4.4.4

[rhodey]

Thanks for the issue report @phipolis :)

The Google account on your phone actually does sync all these "Other Contacts" else Flock would not be able to import them from the Google account. I suspect that the Google sync adapter is setting some flag to hide them from the People/Contacts apps, Flock should probably do the same.

I suppose it could be an option to hide or show these contacts, but I think it makes most sense to keep them hidden if they were hidden on the account they were imported from. Labeling as bug, will look into this deeper tomorrow.

[phipolis]

Thanks! I agree with hiding them, they're things like dynamic email addresses from craigslist.

[phipolis]

Ah-- UI reference to the hiding flag you speak of is found by opening People, selecting "Contacts to display" from the three dots menu, and then clicking "Customize". You can see the user@gmail lists all groups, with "My Contacts" and "Starred in Android" checked by default. User@flock only provides "All Contacts'.

[rhodey]

@phipolis thanks for the update. Sorry for dropping off this thread for awhile, working on closing this now.

I am able to reproduce this kind of behaviour with two contacts while importing contacts to Flock. Furthermore I can view which contacts will be affected by doing the following before import...

People app > Contacts to display > Customize > check only All other contacts

The contact list visible after updating the display settings as above contains all contacts that for one reason or another fall outside the scope of what users really consider to be their contacts. I need to dig through the Android Contacts Provider to figure out exactly how they are designated as "other", but I suspect it is some type of invisible group they are being added too which Flock should maintain during import.