Google could undo one of the most annoying recent changes to the Phone app

Among the many changes Google introduced to the Phone app with its Material 3 Expressive makeover, some didn’t sit quite right with users. If you were especially bothered by Google’s decision to relegate the Contacts tab to the app’s sidebar, you might soon have a cause to celebrate.

While digging through the latest beta version of the Phone by Google app (v240.0.986973448), we managed to enable some new UI changes Google is working on for the bottom navigation bar. Right now, the Phone app has only two tabs in its navigation bar: Home and Keypad, with Contacts tucked away in the sidebar. In countries where Voicemail is supported, the app also displays a third “Voicemail” tab in the navigation bar.

Now, Google is working to bring the Contacts tab back to the navigation bar. It could sit between the Home and Keypad tabs, giving users quick access to all of their saved contacts. Naturally, the sidebar will no longer have the Contacts option once this change rolls out.

While we got the new UI to show up on our test device with a bit of tinkering, it’s hard to tell how close Google is to rolling it out to users. The new placement looks good and works exactly as expected, so it should be ready for prime time. Hopefully, it will roll out sooner rather than later.