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Settings

You can configure various settings in BusyContacts > Settings (also known as "Preferences" on earlier macOS versions). Pick a section in the sidebar on the left to see its settings.

A search field sits at the top of the sidebar. Type part of a setting's name and BusyContacts lists the settings that match, each with the section, tab and group it belongs to. Choose a result and BusyContacts opens that section, switches to the right tab, and briefly highlights the setting.

Most sections also have a Help button at the bottom, which opens the documentation for that section.

General​

The General section is divided into five groups.

Names & Formats​

  • Show first name — Before last name (the default) or Following last name. Controls how names are displayed in Card View and List View (e.g., "Tim Cook" or "Cook Tim"). Sorting of names is configured in the Views section.
  • Address Format — The default address layout, chosen by country. It starts out matching your Mac's region, and the menu lists the countries BusyContacts has formats for, named and sorted by your own language. You can override this on a single address by clicking its label while editing a contact and choosing Set Address Format. See Address Format.
  • Phone Format For Display — How phone numbers are shown when you are not editing them: Original Number (1234567890), Minimal (123 456 7890) (the default), International (+1 234-567-8901) or National ((234) 567-8901). This affects display only, not the stored value. See Phone numbers don’t look right.
  • Apply display format when editing phone numbers — Saves edited phone numbers in the display format above. For example, with National selected, entering +15305551234 stores (530) 555-1234. Off by default, and available only when the display format is not Original Number.

New Contacts​

  • Default Address Book — Which address book new contacts are created in. The menu lists your address books grouped under their accounts, with read-only ones dimmed. The default is Selected address book, which uses whichever writable address book you have selected at the time. See Address Books.

Source List​

  • Source List Font — The font and size of the address books and tags in the source list. Pick a recently used font, Restore Defaults to go back to the system font at 13 point, or Other… to open the macOS font panel.
  • Sort Tag List by — Tag Name (the default) or Tag Count, which orders tags by how many contacts carry them. See Tags.
  • Show tag counts — Displays the count beside each tag in the Tag List. On by default.

Text Editing​

  • Auto-complete text fields — While creating or editing a contact, fields suggest values from your existing contacts. For example, typing "ap" in the Company field fills in "Apple, Inc.". On by default.
  • Auto-capitalize text fields — Capitalizes each field automatically as you enter text and press Tab. Off by default.

Address Detection​

  • Auto-fill address from street field — Type or paste a full address into the Street field and BusyContacts fills in the City, State, Postal Code and Country fields. On by default, and it only fills fields that are still empty. See Address Auto-fill.
  • Automatic postcode lookups — Entering a postal code fills in the city, state and country. On by default, and it only fills fields that are still empty. See Automatic Postcode Lookups.

Accounts​

The Accounts section is used for adding, removing and editing server accounts. Your accounts are listed on the left under Active and Disabled, each with the service it belongs to, and selecting one shows its settings on the right.

  • Plus (+) button — Add a new server account.
  • Minus (-) button — Select an existing account and click Minus (-) to disconnect from it. All of the contacts on that account are removed from BusyContacts but remain intact on the server.

Adding an Account​

Click +, then choose a Server Type: iCloud (the default), Google, FastMail, Contactzilla, Yahoo, Fruux, Office 365 or Personal Outlook under Microsoft Graph, Office 365 under Legacy: Exchange Web Services, CardDAV, Exchange, or BusyContacts WAN. iCloud China also appears if your Mac is set to a China time zone.

Each type asks for what it needs — typically a user name or email and a password, plus a server address for CardDAV and BusyContacts WAN. Exchange adds an Advanced section for Internal Server and External Server. Microsoft Graph accounts have no password fields; you sign in with Microsoft instead.

note

iCloud, Fruux, Yahoo, FastMail and Contactzilla all require an app-specific password rather than your normal password. iCloud's must be 16 to 19 characters. Click Help in the sheet for instructions.

Account Settings​

Which settings an account has depends on what its server supports, so an account shows up to three tabs. The tab strip only appears when there is more than one.

  • Account Information — The account's description, login details and refresh interval.
  • Server Settings — The server addresses BusyContacts connects to.
  • Sharing — The address books other people have shared with you on this account.

The following settings appear on the Account Information tab:

  • Enable this account — Turn this off to stop syncing the account without removing it. The account moves to the Disabled group and its other settings become unavailable.
  • Description — The name shown for this account in Settings and the source list. Leave it blank to go back to the name the service supplies.
  • Login details — Depending on the service, an Apple ID, Email, Yahoo ID, User Name or Login, and a Password. Existing details are locked; click Modify details to edit them, then Save. Google and Microsoft Graph accounts sign in with the provider instead and have no password field here.
  • Map Tags to Groups — Tags from BusyContacts normally map to grouped contacts on the server. Turn this off if the server supports tags natively. On by default, and shown for Fruux and CardDAV accounts.
  • Refresh — How often BusyContacts checks the server for changes: Push where the service supports it, or every 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hour, day, week, month or year. New CardDAV, Exchange and Microsoft Graph accounts start on Push. This setting only affects how often BusyContacts checks for changes; your own edits are sent to the server immediately.

Beneath these, BusyContacts reports the last sync result, or the error if the last sync failed.

The Server Settings tab holds the Server Address for CardDAV and BusyContacts WAN accounts, or Internal Server and External Server for Exchange and legacy Office 365 accounts. Leave the external server blank to use the same address as the internal one.

The Sharing tab lists the people whose address books you can see, with the access you have to each — Read Only, Read & Write or No Access. Type a user into the field and click Add to add someone, select a row and click Delete to remove them. Click Public Address Books… to browse your organization's public folders and subscribe to the address books in them.

See Syncing with a Server for more info.

Views​

The Views section is used for configuring the sort order in both Card View and List View, and choosing the columns to display in List View.

Card View​

  • Sort Card View by — Last, First (the default), First, Last, Address Book or Tag. You can control how the names are displayed in the General section.
  • Use phonetic names when available — Sorts by a contact's phonetic name fields where they exist. On by default.

Grouping​

  • Group pinned contacts — Keeps pinned contacts grouped together. On by default.

  • Group upcoming events — Promotes contacts with upcoming dates to the top of the contact list under an Upcoming section. On by default. Choose how far ahead to look: Today, Next 2 Days, Next 3 Days, Next 4 Days, Next 5 Days, Next 7 Days (the default) or Next 14 Days. Then choose which dates count:

    • Include Birthdays — On by default.
    • Include Anniversaries — On by default.
    • Include Death Anniversaries — Off by default.
    • Include Other Dates — Off by default.

    See Upcoming Events for more details.

Display​

  • Show contact photos in list — Shows contact photos in List View. On by default.

  • Use address book color for names — Shows names using each address book's color. Off by default.

  • Show notes indicator in list — Shows an indicator in List View when a contact has Notes. On by default.

  • Hide floating windows when switching to another app — Controls whether detached floating Info Panel windows stay on screen when you switch away from BusyContacts.

    By default this is off, which means any floating Info Panel you've opened via Get Info, the keyboard shortcut, or by double-clicking a contact stays visible and continues to float above windows in other apps (Mail, a web browser, etc.) so you can reference a contact's details while you work elsewhere. When enabled, floating Info Panel windows hide automatically as soon as BusyContacts becomes inactive, and reappear the next time you switch back to BusyContacts. This only affects detached / floating Info Panel windows. The Info Panel inside the main BusyContacts window is not affected.

List View​

  • List View Font — The font and size of the List View columns. Pick a recently used font, Restore Defaults, or Other… to open the macOS font panel.
  • List View Columns — Which columns appear in List View. Over a hundred are available, covering name parts, company and job details, contact methods for work and home, dates, personal details, tags and notes, social networks, URLs and record information such as Created, Modified, Address Book and Private. You can also choose columns by control-clicking the column headers in List View.
  • Sort List View by — Sort up to four levels deep. Each level offers any of the List View columns plus None, with a Reverse checkbox for descending order. The first level starts at Name and the second at Modified. Setting a level to None clears the levels below it. You can also sort by clicking the column headers in List View.
  • Sort Name Column by — How the combined Name column is sorted: Last, First or First, Last (the default).
  • List View Custom Columns — Name up to ten Custom Fields here. A name you enter replaces "Custom 1" through "Custom 10" in the column list and the sort menus.

Info Panel​

The Info Panel section is used for configuring how the Info Panel looks and which fields it shows. A live Info Panel sits at the bottom of the section, so every change you make is shown immediately.

  • Card Layout — Stacked (the default — photo centered above the name) or Side-by-Side (photo to the left of the name). This controls how linked cards are laid out relative to each other.
  • Info Panel Font — Controls the font and size of the Info Panel fields. Choose a recently used font, Restore Defaults, or Other… to open the font panel.
  • Photo Size — The default size of the photo in the Info Panel: None, Small (the default), Medium, Large or Extra Large. Clicking the photo while viewing a contact cycles through the sizes.

Beside the preview is the list of every field the Info Panel can show. Check a field to make it appear by default on all cards when creating or editing contacts, and uncheck it to hide it. Unchecked fields still appear on a card that already has a value for them. You can also add a field to an individual card without making it a global default using the add field command in the Info Panel.

The preview itself works like a card, so you can set the defaults for each field on it:

  • Field Label — Click the blue field label to change the default field label. For example, on the phone field you can change the default label from 'phone' to 'work'. When you change a label here, it becomes the default label when creating new contacts. You can even choose a custom field label to use as the default.
  • Plus (+) button — Click to add an additional field of the same type (e.g. a second Phone field).
  • Minus (-) button — Click to remove a field. Removing a default field does not remove any data from existing contacts. It only affects which fields are displayed when creating a new contact.

Integrations​

The Integrations section lets BusyContacts integrate with other apps.

Mail (Apple Mail)​

BusyContacts can capture emails you view or send in Apple Mail and show them in the Timeline for matching contacts. This uses a MailKit-based Apple Mail extension called BusyContacts Mail Assistant.

  • Capture emails viewed or sent in Apple Mail — Captures emails that match a BusyContacts contact; it does not import your entire Mail history. On by default. Captured emails are stored on this Mac only and do not sync between Macs.

Setup is a two-step process: enable capture here, then enable BusyContacts Mail Assistant in Apple Mail. For full instructions, see Activity List.

See this page for more details.

Backups​

The Backups section is used for configuring the automatic backups.

  • Automatically back up — How often backups are created: never, every hour, every 2 hours, every 4 hours, every 8 hours or every day (the default).
  • Backups to keep — How many backups are kept before old ones are deleted: 10 (the default), 25, 50 or 100.
  • Backup location — Where backups are stored. The default is the BusyContacts Backups folder inside your Documents folder. Click Choose to pick a different folder.
  • Restore From Backup — Restores your contacts from a backup file. Pick the backup, choose which address books to restore and where they should go, then confirm. Any changes you have made since that backup will be lost.

Advanced​

The Advanced section is used for various settings.

  • Open maps in — Whether BusyContacts opens map links in Apple Maps (the default) or Google Maps.
  • Automatically link identical contacts in the background — Finds duplicate contacts with the same name across your address books and links them, so you can view them as a single virtual card using View > Combine Linked Cards. On by default. See Linking and Merging Cards.
  • Confirm changes to cards on shared address books — Asks you to confirm before you copy, cut, move, modify or delete a contact on a shared address book. Off by default. The confirmation includes a Don't warn me again option, which turns this setting back off. See Sharing Address Books.
  • Detect HTML text in Notes — Renders HTML-formatted notes properly instead of showing raw markup. On by default.
  • LAN sharing name — The name other BusyContacts users see when you share address books over a local network. It starts as your computer's name.
  • Port — Dynamic (the default) lets BusyContacts pick a port; Static lets you fix one between 1000 and 65535, starting at 4991. See Sharing Contacts for limitations.
  • vCard format — The format used when exporting contacts as vCards: 4.0 or 3.0 (the default). Most other apps, including Apple Contacts, support a maximum of 3.0, so use 3.0 for best compatibility and 4.0 when you need newer vCard features.
  • Export notes — Includes Notes when exporting contacts. On by default.
  • Export photos & attachments — Includes photos and attachments when exporting contacts. On by default.
  • Share my usage statistics — Sends anonymous usage data so we can see which features are underused and where the app needs work. Off by default. The Mac App Store and Setapp versions show this option but collect nothing.

Updates​

If you're on the direct version of the app, you will see this additional section where you can choose how often BusyContacts checks for updates. If you're on the Mac App Store or Setapp version, updates are handled through those stores and you may not see this section.

  • Check for updates every — How often BusyContacts checks for updates: Day (the default), 2 Days, 3 Days, 4 Days, Week, 2 Weeks, 3 Weeks or Month.
  • including beta — Include beta releases when checking for updates. Off by default. This checkbox appears only for a registered, unexpired direct licence.

Note: This preference may be ignored for important bug fixes or security patches. If you opt-in to beta, update checks may be performed more frequently.

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