Format phone numbers consistently within contact viewer

[caleb531]

Hi,

 

I love Alfred's built-in contact viewer, and I use it all the time. However, I've noticed that phone numbers are always displayed as how they were originally typed into the contact viewer. For example, if I type a create a new contact and add a phone number with no separators (e.g. 1234567890), the phone number would display exactly as such when viewing the respective contact in Alfred.

 

I would much prefer that phone numbers within Alfred's contact viewer be consistently formatted. I would much prefer a format such as 123-456-7890, though perhaps a menu of options to choose from would be a much better approach.

 

Is this feasible to add?

 

Thanks,

Caleb

Edited April 24, 2015 by caleb531

[Vero]

 

I would much prefer that phone numbers within Alfred's contact viewer be consistently formatted. I would much prefer a format such as 123-456-7890, though perhaps a menu of options to choose from would be a much better approach.

 

 

Blanket-formatting isn't necessarily suitable for anyone with contacts in more than one country. For example, in my contacts, I have North American, French, Australian and UK phone numbers, which all have varying formats and country codes, so a menu in simple dropdown menu in Alfred's prefs wouldn't resolve that issue.

 

Due to the fact that there so many different ways to format phone numbers based on numerous different standards across the world, our view for version 2 was that Alfred would use the format provided to him by OS X, leaving the logic to your system settings and OS X itself. This allows users to use their respective country's formatting, or an alternative formatting of their choice.

 

However, a few OS versions ago, bugs were introduced to the Contacts API, resulting in the phone numbers being passed wrongly formatted (or not formatted at all).

 

In the light of this, we have a ticket to improve this in a future major version of Alfred, so that Alfred doesn't rely on OS X. In the meantime, you can manually enter the contact details in Contacts using the format you want, and this will be fed through by OS X.

[caleb531]

 

 

 

Blanket-formatting isn't necessarily suitable for anyone with contacts in more than one country. For example, in my contacts, I have North American, French, Australian and UK phone numbers, which all have varying formats and country codes, so a menu in simple dropdown menu in Alfred's prefs wouldn't resolve that issue.

 

Due to the fact that there so many different ways to format phone numbers based on numerous different standards across the world, our view for version 2 was that Alfred would use the format provided to him by OS X, leaving the logic to your system settings and OS X itself. This allows users to use their respective country's formatting, or an alternative formatting of their choice.

 

However, a few OS versions ago, bugs were introduced to the Contacts API, resulting in the phone numbers being passed wrongly formatted (or not formatted at all).

 

In the light of this, we have a ticket to improve this in a future major version of Alfred, so that Alfred doesn't rely on OS X. In the meantime, you can manually enter the contact details in Contacts using the format you want, and this will be fed through by OS X.

 

 

Fair enough. In that case, I'll just write an AppleScript to reformat phone numbers in my contacts consistently.

 

Thanks,

Caleb