Tuesday, June 11, 2024 – Stop Windows from collecting and sharing your location data – Use your phone’s Contacts List as a notepad

Use your phone’s Contacts List as a notepad

Do you ever find yourself scrambling to find a tidbit of important information but you can’t remember where you placed the paper for safekeeping?

Yeah, me too. And truth be told, there have been times when I was never able to find it.

Well here’s a quick tip that might help…

You can store miscellaneous tidbits of information right in your phone’s Contacts List.

For example, let’s say you have a gym membership and you have the option of opening the door to the gym either by scanning a membership card or typing a code into a keypad.

If you’re like most people you probably prefer using your card to open the door. But what if you’re in a hurry one day and you happen to forget and leave the card at home?

Would you be able to remember the numeric code you were given way back when you signed up for the membership? Probably not if you’ve always used the card to unlock the door.

Well here’s what you can do…

Open your phone’s Contacts List and edit the contact info for the gym by adding the numeric unlock code to the “Notes” section.

If you don’t already have a contact for the gym, just create one (you won’t need to enter a phone number or email address, although it might not be a bad idea to do so).

Once you have the unlock code stored in your Contacts List you’ll be able to quickly retrieve it if you ever find yourself needing to use it.

Of course the gym door unlock code is just an example. You can actually store any piece of info you believe you might need in the future this way.

Another example: I do my own oil changes so I store the oil and filter info for each vehicle in my phone’s Contacts List. Then if I get to the store and I can’t remember which oil filter I need to buy for the specific vehicle that’s due for an oil change I just open up my Contacts and there it is. That’s a lot faster than thumbing through the store’s cross reference manual, or even consulting Google.

One word of caution: I would advise against storing credit card info or any other type of sensitive info in your Contacts List, but most any type of routine data is fine.

And now, I’ll finish up with one final recommendation…

If you decide to store any type of information in there that you wouldn’t want just anyone to see, be sure to put a strong access code (i.e. PIN) on your phone. Just sayin’.