Google Pixel 8a, Android 15

It used to be that when entering a phone number in a contact, I could
click the down arrow next to the label, and "No label" was one of the
choices. That was almost always my preference, since I have only one
phone number each for almost all of my contacts.

But that option is no longer visible, so I have to live with stupid
labels like "Mobile" or "Main" or "Work" on businesses in my
contacts. Is there some way that I'm missing to simply not have a
label on a phone number?

(I tried selecting Custom and entering nothing, but Contacts wouldn't
accept that. Ditto when I tried entering just a space.)

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

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On Wed, 14 May 2025 09:54:55 -0700 Stan Brown said:

Google Pixel 8a, Android 15

It used to be that when entering a phone number in a contact, I could
click the down arrow next to the label, and "No label" was one of the choices. That was almost always my preference, since I have only one
phone number each for almost all of my contacts.

But that option is no longer visible, so I have to live with stupid
labels like "Mobile" or "Main" or "Work" on businesses in my
contacts. Is there some way that I'm missing to simply not have a
label on a phone number?

(I tried selecting Custom and entering nothing, but Contacts wouldn't
accept that. Ditto when I tried entering just a space.)

It sounds frustrating to lose a customization option you relied on! You're right, the "No label" option for phone numbers in Google Contacts seems to
have disappeared in recent Android versions, including Android 15 on your
Pixel 8a.

Unfortunately, you've already tried the common workarounds (Custom with
nothing or a space), which no longer seem to be accepted.

As of now, it appears there isn't a direct way within the standard Google Contacts app on Android 15 to completely remove the label from a phone
number field. The system seems to require a label to be associated with
each number.

Here are a few thoughts and potential (though not ideal) workarounds you
might consider:

Using a less obtrusive label: While not "No label," perhaps a very generic label like "Phone" would be less distracting than "Mobile" for a business.
You could try setting "Phone" as a custom label and see if that's slightly better for your use case.

Providing feedback to Google: The best way to potentially see this feature return is to provide feedback directly to the Google Contacts team. You can usually do this within the Contacts app itself (look for a "Help &
feedback" option in the settings or menu). While it might not lead to an immediate change, user feedback does influence future updates.

Exploring third-party contact apps: While it means switching from the
default Contacts app, some third-party contact management apps on the Play Store might offer more granular control over contact fields and labeling.
You could explore a few to see if any meet your preference.

However, be mindful of the permissions these apps request and choose a reputable one.

It's a shame when customization options like this are removed. Hopefully, Google will reconsider and bring back the "No label" option in a future
update.

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On Wed, 14 May 2025 18:11:26 +0100, Martim wrote:

On Wed, 14 May 2025 09:54:55 -0700 Stan Brown said:

Google Pixel 8a, Android 15

It used to be that when entering a phone number in a contact, I could
click the down arrow next to the label, and "No label" was one of the choices. That was almost always my preference, since I have only one
phone number each for almost all of my contacts.

But that option is no longer visible, so I have to live with stupid
labels like "Mobile" or "Main" or "Work" on businesses in my
contacts. Is there some way that I'm missing to simply not have a
label on a phone number?

(I tried selecting Custom and entering nothing, but Contacts wouldn't accept that. Ditto when I tried entering just a space.)

It sounds frustrating to lose a customization option you relied on! You're right, the "No label" option for phone numbers in Google Contacts seems to have disappeared in recent Android versions, including Android 15 on your Pixel 8a.

Unfortunately, you've already tried the common workarounds (Custom with nothing or a space), which no longer seem to be accepted.

As of now, it appears there isn't a direct way within the standard Google Contacts app on Android 15 to completely remove the label from a phone
number field. The system seems to require a label to be associated with
each number.

Here are a few thoughts and potential (though not ideal) workarounds you might consider:

Using a less obtrusive label: While not "No label," perhaps a very generic label like "Phone" would be less distracting than "Mobile" for a business. You could try setting "Phone" as a custom label and see if that's slightly better for your use case.

Providing feedback to Google: The best way to potentially see this feature return is to provide feedback directly to the Google Contacts team. You can usually do this within the Contacts app itself (look for a "Help &
feedback" option in the settings or menu). While it might not lead to an immediate change, user feedback does influence future updates.

Exploring third-party contact apps: While it means switching from the
default Contacts app, some third-party contact management apps on the Play Store might offer more granular control over contact fields and labeling.
You could explore a few to see if any meet your preference.

However, be mindful of the permissions these apps request and choose a reputable one.

It's a shame when customization options like this are removed. Hopefully, Google will reconsider and bring back the "No label" option in a future update.

Thanks, Martin. At least I know I haven't missed something.

I have just entered feedback in the app's Help and Feedback section,
for what that's worth.

I did think about switching apps, but (again, as you suggest) I'm
reluctant to get yet another entity access to my contacts and
potentially other data on my phone.

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

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Martim wrote:

Unfortunately, you've already tried the common workarounds (Custom with nothing or a space), which no longer seem to be accepted.

Custom with a normal space, or an NBSP are rejected, but custom with a zero-width space is accepted ... just copy one in a web browser from a
unicode table, and paste it into the custom label in contacts.

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On Thu, 15 May 2025 19:51:28 +0100 Andy Burns said:

Unfortunately, you've already tried the common workarounds (Custom with
nothing or a space), which no longer seem to be accepted.

Custom with a normal space, or an NBSP are rejected, but custom with a zero-width space is accepted ... just copy one in a web browser from a unicode table, and paste it into the custom label in contacts.

That's a neat idea to use the ZWSP to fool the contacts GUI! Clever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space

U+200B
​
​
<wbr>

Does use of the zero-width space also affect the sort order?

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On Thu, 15 May 2025 19:51:28 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

Martim wrote:

Unfortunately, you've already tried the common workarounds (Custom with nothing or a space), which no longer seem to be accepted.

Custom with a normal space, or an NBSP are rejected, but custom with a zero-width space is accepted ... just copy one in a web browser from a unicode table, and paste it into the custom label in contacts.

That's clever, Andy, but how do I get the character from a web page?
Every time I do a copy, I get "200b" or "U+200b" or such, not the
actual character.

I tried installing Character Pad, but when I navigate to the
character and copy, then try to paste it in the "Custom label name"
box, the OK button is grayed out.

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

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Stan Brown wrote:

That's clever, Andy, but how do I get the character from a web page?
Every time I do a copy, I get "200b" or "U+200b" or such, not the
actual character.

The original page I found to copy various types of space from was

<https://www.namecheap.com/visual/font-generator/whitespace>

but I just found this one with a shorter URL

<https://zerowidthspace.me>

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On Sun, 18 May 2025 09:54:23 +0100, Andy Burns wrote :

That's clever, Andy, but how do I get the character from a web page?
Every time I do a copy, I get "200b" or "U+200b" or such, not the
actual character.

The original page I found to copy various types of space from was

<https://www.namecheap.com/visual/font-generator/whitespace>

but I just found this one with a shorter URL

<https://zerowidthspace.me>

That was nice of you, Andy, for posting what worked for you for Stan.
If that doesn't work for Stan, some of these below may work for him.

Since my 'newsreader' has no concept of funky characters, my posts are automatically filtered through a list of common "pretty" characters.

Then they have to be placed into gVIM using their hex codes but you have to find the hex codes with ga (get ascii), not all of which show up in gVim.

You can often get the hex code by pasting into this web site.
<https://www.textfixer.com/html/html-character-encoding.php>

I often use this character finder to figure out non-printing characters.
<http://www.mauvecloud.net/charsets/CharCodeFinder.html>

Sometimes this works well sometimes for many unicode characters.
<https://www.codetable.net/unicodecharacters>

Sometimes you have HTML charactes to deal with, which are a PITA.
<https://html-css-js.com/html/character-codes/all/>

All sorts of character-conversion sites are needed at times.
<https://www.codetable.net/unicodecharacters>

In summary, when you write your own newsreader, you need to deal with the character conversion, e.g., of non-breaking white-space to a space, where
not every character shows up inside of gVim (which is my editor of choice).

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