Android contacts custom field

Question

Is it possible to add custom field to some contacts, with custom mimetype (like facebook profile) without writing sync adapter, authenticator and sync service? I do not want to add "synchronization" functionality for my application.

Answer 1

After long research I think that I found an answer to this question.

There is no way of creating custom clickable and visible fields without writing some Synchronization service code, authenticator and syncAdapter.

Here is sample code which is adding new account to "Accounts and synchronization", and adding new contact with custom field, which can be viewed in some activity from current project: https://github.com/nemezis/SampleContacts.

Answer 2

Android does support syncing custom fields 'out of the box' if you use Gmail.

You can use Gmail in the browser to add custom fields to any contact. This field will then sync to the phone.

However, to view or edit these on the phone, you will need to use some new applications.

I wrote an article that describes this process. Gmail's Contacts Custom Fields and Android.