Well, you can if you have an Android phone—and indeed, the ability to pin a contact directly to your home screen is such a good idea that I can’t believe it’s still not possible on an iPhone.

Once you’ve added a contact to your Android home screen, you’ll get one-tap access to their phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Google+ profiles, and more.

Here’s the trick…

• Open the Contacts app on your Android phone, then browse or search for a specific contact. (Note: these steps may vary depending on the make and model of your Android phone. I tested this tip on a Motorola G running on Android version 4.4.4.)
• Found the right contact? Tap the name, then tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of the screen.
• Tap the “Create shortcut” option.

Now, go back to your home screen to find the new shortcut for your contact. Can’t find it? If your main home screen is too cluttered, your contact may be sitting on a secondary screen; just flick left or right to shuffle through them all.

You can pin a contact to your home screen in just a few taps.

Tap the shortcut to get a pop-up window with a menu of phone numbers; keep scrolling for e-mail addresses, street addresses, and more.

Don’t want a particular contact shortcut on your home screen anymore? Tap and hold it, then drag it up to the “Remove” icon near the top of the screen.

Bonus tip

You can drag a contact icon into the dock at the bottom of your home screen. Don’t believe me? Try it!

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Along the lines of the other day’s tip (which was adding default Alerts), these seconds add up when I am always having to switch the label.

Hi Jayne! Great question, and yes, another great New Year’s idea for finding lots of little ways to save time. Unfortunately, I’ve got good news and bad news about this one.

You can add new fields (like “Job Title”) that you always want to appear whenever you create a new contact.

First, the bad news: nope, you can’t change the defaults for a new contact in iOS. You can create custom labels, sure, but you can’t (for example) replace the default “home” label with “work” when you’re tapping a phone number into a new contact card.

If you’ve got a Mac, though, you can indeed create your own custom template for new contacts in the Contacts app—one with only the fields and labels you want. And if you’re signed in to iCloud, any new contact cards you create on your Mac will automatically pop up on your iPhone and/or iPad.

Here’s what you do…

• Launch the Contact app on your Mac, click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select Preferences, then click the Template tab.
• Next, go ahead and add or delete the default fields that you’d like to see in a fresh contact card. Want the Job Title field to always appear? Then click the Add Field menu and select Job Title. Want to nix a field that’s already in the template? Just click the little red button to the left. You can also change the default labels—”home,” “work,” etc.—for each field, too.
• All done? Simply close the Template window.

Now, click the “+” button in the bottom-right corner of the main Contacts window to create a new contact—and when you do, a blank contact form will appear, customized just the way you wanted.

Hope that help, Jayne. Still have questions? Let me know!

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