Merge favorites into contacts tab

[williamsp]

Checklist

• I made sure that there are no existing issues - open or closed - to which I could contribute my information.
• I made sure that there are no existing discussions - open or closed - to which I could contribute my information.
• I have read the FAQs inside the app (Menu -> About -> FAQs) and my problem isn't listed.
• I have taken the time to fill in all the required details. I understand that the request will be dismissed otherwise.
• This issue contains only one feature request.
• I have read and understood the contribution guidelines.

Feature description

Please add option to merge favorites into contacts tab, with favorites will be listed above the contacts. Or maybe, a new "Contacts with Favorites" tab that can be checked on Manage shown tab while unchecking both the current "Contacts" and "Favorites" tabs. *See Google Contacts for comparison.

Why do you want this feature?

Faster to call favorites, and switch between contacts and favorites.

I know that you can set favorites tab as the default tab to open at app start, but when you want to call one not in favorites, you have to switch tab again. It is just more convenient to just swipe down past the favorites (or directly search for it) on a single tab, without having to switch tab.

Additional information

No response

[shmorky]

Very strongly agree! I would also like to add that it is unintuitive to me that, when in the favorites tab, the search function only searches my favorite contacts instead of all of them.

[BTarn]

I’ve implemented a version of this feature in my own fork by modifying the contact loading and sorting logic. I'm not opening a formal Pull Request as my fork is heavily customized for my own use, but I wanted to share the logic here in case anyone wants to pick it up and upstream it.

In fragments/ContactsFragment.kt, the refreshItems() function can be updated to handle the merging of private contacts with specific sorting priority (Starred first, then Alphabetical).

Proposed logic for refreshItems():

    override fun refreshItems(invalidate: Boolean, callback: (() -> Unit)?) {
        // We fetch everything (favoritesOnly = false)
        val privateCursor = context?.getMyContactsCursor(favoritesOnly = false, withPhoneNumbersOnly = true)

        ContactsHelper(context).getContacts(showOnlyContactsWithNumbers = true) { contacts ->
            val fullList = ArrayList<Contact>()
            fullList.addAll(contacts)

            // Add private contacts if they aren't ignored
            if (SMT_PRIVATE !in context.baseConfig.ignoredContactSources) {
                val privateContacts = MyContactsContentProvider.getContacts(context, privateCursor)
                if (privateContacts.isNotEmpty()) {
                    fullList.addAll(privateContacts)
                }
            }

            // --- THE MERGE & SORT LOGIC ---
            // 1. Put Starred (1) at the top, Unstarred (0) below
            // 2. Then sort alphabetically by name
            fullList.sortWith(compareByDescending<Contact> { it.starred }.thenBy { it.getNameToDisplay().lowercase() })

            allContacts = fullList
            (activity as MainActivity).cacheContacts()

            activity?.runOnUiThread {
                // Crucial: Pass the sorted fullList here
                gotContacts(fullList)
                callback?.invoke()
            }
        }
    }

UI Considerations:
To make the UI feel consistent with this change, you may also want to modify FastScrollerView.kt to group all favorite/starred contacts under a single symbol (like a star ★) instead of individual letters in the scrollbar.

Hopefully, this helps anyone looking to implement this feature!