Edit Call history names

Question

I've implemented a contacts app, and I would like my application's contact names to be displayed in the device's call log history (Phone app) in case I receive/make a call to these numbers. How could I achieve that?

Answer 1

The CallLog.Calls table contains fields for caching names, because these are cached names, they're not expected to always be true, and are refreshed from time to time.

Usually, in most Phone/Call-log apps, when you open the call-log it'll display the calls list along with their cached names stored in the Calls table, and then spin up a background service that refreshes cached names, adding names to numbers recently saved as contacts, or updating names that had recently changed.

So if your app stored some number from the call log as a contact, if you then launch the call log app you should see the updated name appearing within a second or two.

If you want to store that name programatically in your code, you can do that easily:

String someNumber = "+12125551234";
String aName = "Jane Addams";
int numberType = Phone.TYPE_MOBILE; // see https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone#column-aliases

final ContentValues values = new ContentValues(2);
values.put(Calls.CACHED_NAME, aName);
values.put(Calls.CACHED_NUMBER_TYPE, numberType);

// on Lollipop+ device, you can also set Calls.CACHED_LOOKUP_URI and Calls.CACHED_FORMATTED_NUMBER

getContentResolver().update(Calls.CONTENT_URI, values, Calls.NUMBER + "='" + someNumber + "'", null);

Answer 2

Thank you @PedroHawk. I found the answer in the link you provided. More specifically, I will create an Account of my app in the Device Accounts and then use a SyncAdapter to sync the contact data from my web service to the ContactsProvider of the device.