You don’t need to specify what type of data you’re entering (e.g. When you’re adding a new contact, you can simply type out the person’s name, email, phone number, and more in a continuous string, then hit ‘Add Contact’ when you’re done. Put simply, Cardhop’s natural language system works extremely well. Typing in this search field using natural language enables quick entry of new contacts, adding new data points to existing contacts, or triggering an action that reaches out to one of your contacts. Near the bottom of Cardhop’s interface on nearly every screen of the app, you’ll find a search box. Flexibits’ popular calendar app, Fantastical, has included natural language input as one of its core strengths for years now, and Cardhop proves that it’s just as powerful when applied to contacts. ![]() All the contacts you see in Apple’s Contacts will, upon granting permission, be automatically displayed in Cardhop as well.Īt the center of Cardhop’s appeal is a feature that’s entirely unsurprising to find in a Flexibits app: a strong natural language input system. Getting started with Cardhop is extremely easy because it taps into your existing contacts database as configured in the Settings app. Powered by a convenient natural language input system, Cardhop includes a host of features that differentiate it from Apple’s Contacts app and pose a strong threat to the iOS default. The bar for such apps is raised higher in many ways.įacing that challenge today is a new app from Flexibits, Cardhop for iOS, which serves as the iPhone and iPad companion to the contacts app launched for Mac in late 2017. But when there’s a free, built-in option, third-party apps not only have to prove that they’re good apps, they also have to offer enough extra benefit above and beyond what the Apple-designed default provides. It’s one thing to find new customers in a market limited to third-party options, where prospective users have to pay one way or another to access an app in that category. Cardhop also features action buttons throughout the app for calling, messaging, videoing, and emailing contacts.Any time a new app launches in the same category as a first-party, pre-installed app, there’s always a lot to prove. Search ‘Email Tim’ and Cardhop will only present the email address for Tim Cook and not all the other information in the contact. The natural language parser also lets you easily search contacts and even launch actions. This makes sense since a name looks like a name, an address looks like an address, and a phone number looks different than an email address, but the same single text entry in the built-in Contacts app creates a new contact with the first name ‘Tim Cook 1 Apple Park, Cupertino, CA 95014 80 birthday ’ and no other details.Įasy contact creation is only the start of what Cardhop offers. For example, you can type (or copy and paste) ‘Tim Cook 1 Apple Park, Cupertino, CA 95014 80 birthday ’ and Cardhop will create the new entry with the correct fields populated. Just like Fantastical, Cardhop intelligently parses natural text to create new entries and launch actions. You just don’t notice because something magnitudes better hasn’t existed. Even as a basic database, Apple’s Contacts app can feel clunky and not well considered. I treat it like a database that’s primarily used to populate contact information in Mail, Messages, FaceTime, and Calendar. Personally, I don’t launch Apple’s Contacts app very often. That’s partly because Apple’s Contacts app hasn’t changed in several versions aside from gaining a rich leather address book theme then shedding the leather in favor of its current stark design. Cardhop is a super smart contacts app that makes the built-in Contacts app feel like it was made 20 years ago. ![]() Flexibits, the team behind the excellent calendar app Fantastical, is out with a brand new Mac app that turns your messy contacts database into something completely usable and interactive.
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