What's new in My People: public info lookups, smarter sync, and finding people you know

The last two weeks were among the busiest yet for My People. We shipped a lot, and nearly all of it goes back to the reason the app exists: helping you remember who people are, not just how to reach them.

Here's what's new.

Find public info about a person, and review it before it's saved

You add a contact with an email address and nothing else. A month later you can't remember where they work or what they do. Find public info fills that gap.

On any person page, tap Find public info. My People looks for public details tied to that person: their company, job title, city, website and social profiles. The app saves these as suggestions. Nothing is written to the contact until you review it and pick what to keep.

A few principles shaped how this works:

• Every finding cites a source. Web results must link to the page they came from, so you can check it yourself.
• No data brokers. People-search and data-broker sites are excluded. The app never returns home addresses or sensitive categories.
• You stay in control. Company, job title, birthday and photo each take a single choice. Values you already have are never overwritten.
• Earlier findings are kept. If you run a lookup again, suggestions you haven't reviewed yet stay where they are.
• Photos are confirmed first. A new photo replaces the current one only after it has been imported successfully. If an import fails, the suggestion stays so you can try again.

You can also run lookups for many contacts at once from the contacts list. The app starts with your favorites and the people you've contacted recently.

Fill in a contact from a link, some text, or a photo of a business card

Adding someone new should take seconds. The contact form now has an autofill panel that accepts:

• A link to a public page, such as a personal site or a company "About" page
• Pasted text, such as an email signature or a conference bio
• A photo of a business card

My People pulls out the name, company, title, emails, phones and more, and shows each field as a suggestion. Accept the ones you want, then save.

Contact sync no longer erases your notes

This was an important fix. Re-syncing from Google Contacts or iCloud used to overwrite fields you had added yourself, such as relationship, how you met, nickname, important dates and preferences. Now sync updates only the fields that come from your provider. Your personal context stays put, and lists such as dates are merged, not replaced.

Sync also imports more than before:

• Google: nicknames, dated events, interests and contact photos
• iCloud and vCard: nicknames, anniversaries, Apple's labelled dates and inline contact photos

Find someone you know, and control whether people can find you

The homepage has a new Find someone you know box. Enter an exact email address or phone number. If that person has a My People profile and allows discovery, you'll see a simple public card. It's built to be the opposite of a people-search site:

• Exact matches only. There's no partial matching, fuzzy search or autocomplete.
• Opting out is easy and complete. In Settings → Discoverability you can turn off discovery by email or phone, or turn on Block my info lookup to hide everything. You decide which public fields to show, such as name, photo, city, employer, job title and links.
• You don't need an account to opt out. Anyone can go to the manage-visibility page, confirm their email or phone with a one-time code, and hide themselves.
• Hidden looks the same as missing. A hidden person and someone who doesn't exist get identical responses, so you can't tell the two apart.
• Lookups are rate-limited. Strict per-visitor limits and abuse protection keep the feature from being used to scrape people.

Verification codes and briefings by text message

Phone verification codes can now arrive by SMS, and so can the notice for your morning briefing. The texts never include relationship details: a code is just the code, and a briefing notice just tells you your briefing is ready. Email delivery works the same as before.

Use My People with your AI assistant

My People has had an MCP server for a while, which lets AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT work with your people records. There's now an agents hub with a setup guide for each supported client, so it's easier to connect your assistant and ask questions like "Whose birthday is coming up?" or "When did I last talk to Anna?"

The MCP tools can also look up public info about a contact and apply the suggestions you approve, using the same review-first process as the app.

On the go: iOS and Android

• iOS: contact profiles show more fields, and you can find and review public info right on your iPhone. Contact search is faster and better at matching, and Sign in with Google is more reliable.
• Android: a native Android app is on its way. It's built with Jetpack Compose and includes people, circles, timelines, import, public-info review, the assistant, Google Contacts sync, dark mode and support for larger screens. We'll announce when it lands on Google Play.

Smaller improvements

• Clearer confirmation dialogs before destructive actions such as deleting a circle or merging contacts
• Region-aware cookie consent: analytics stay off until you opt in where the law requires it, and Global Privacy Control is respected
• Better search-engine basics across the public site, including a sitemap, canonical links and robots rules

What's next

We're finishing the Android release and continuing to improve public-info suggestions so they're more accurate and get out of your way faster. As always, nothing about the people in your life is shared or saved without your say-so.

Have feedback or an idea? We'd love to hear it. The best way to stay close to the people who matter is to build the tool together.

— The My People Team