[A] Disable Google Contacts Sync & Force Store Locally in ICS

[haydent]

Reclaim your Contacts !

Actually turned out simpler to do than i initially thought it would be.

• Enables "Keep Locally" ( keep_local ) option for adding new contacts instead of forced google account.
• Prevents google from deleting all you contacts when you remove your account
• Disables google contact sync

The offending package comes with gapps if you got google that way.

GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk you will find it in /system/app/ (need root file explorer to see it though)

You can make this fix in 3 ways, the first may not need root but i cant test as my phone is rooted.

• In Settings>App find it in the list of all installed apps, click it, click disable. (please someone tell me if they can do this without root)
• Use a root file explorer such as "Root Browser", navigate to /system/app/ backup the app .apk to your sdcard for example, then delete it.
• You can also try clicking the app .apk in "Root Browser" and choose uninstall, but i could get this to work.

Thats it ! , no need to reboot. Enjoy

(to test it worked, just navigate to Settings>Accounts>(your google account) and you will see there is no longer the option to sync contacts)

:highfive:

 

[jago25_98]

replacing it

Reclaim your Contacts !

Actually turned out simpler to do than i initially thought it would be.

• Enables "Keep Locally" ( keep_local ) option for adding new contacts instead of forced google account.
• Prevents google from deleting all you contacts when you remove your account
• Disables google contact sync

The offending package comes with gapps if you got google that way.

GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk you will find it in /system/app/ (need root file explorer to see it though)

You can make this fix in 3 ways, the first may not need root but i cant test as my phone is rooted.

• In Settings>App find it in the list of all installed apps, click it, click disable. (please someone tell me if they can do this without root)
• Use a root file explorer such as "Root Browser", navigate to /system/app/ backup the app .apk to your sdcard for example, then delete it.
• You can also try clicking the app .apk in "Root Browser" and choose uninstall, but i could get this to work.

Thats it ! , no need to reboot. Enjoy

(to test it worked, just navigate to Settings>Accounts>(your google account) and you will see there is no longer the option to sync contacts)

:highfive:

What would be the thing to replace this with? It's important to have something as convenient as what we're replacing. You can export you contacts to a single .vcf file. This can then be bluetoothed over to your desktop, uploaded to a server or transferred by USB or sdcard but what we really want is something as convenient as Google Contacts which syncronises to a place/server that you control automatically and easily.

Not sure if there's an alternative app out there though for this?
There's Go Contacts, ContactMoney and alternative dialers but I don't think these have alternative sync methods.

I think I'd prefer something from the fDroid/homebrew/commandline way. Perhaps a SyncML solution, or just something that automates the process of exporting contacts, encrypting them with a basic password and uploading to dropbox or an email address.

 

[haydent]

i was thinking the same thing, like ftp/sftp backup. it could be done pretty easily but i may not be the person to do it , i havent looked around though and suspect there may already be something already that could do this...

 

[haydent]

btw, yes i love f-droid too and recommend everyone to install its repo browser app and check out whats on offer.

 

[XdxH62]

What would be the thing to replace this with?

In f-droid you find funambol (syncML), LDAP Sync and aCal (CardDAV).

I don't use any of them (to lazy to set up a server) but with some effort you should be able to make contact-sync work for you.

 

[zzerozzero1]

What would be the thing to replace this with? It's important to have something as convenient as what we're replacing. You can export you contacts to a single .vcf file. This can then be bluetoothed over to your desktop, uploaded to a server or transferred by USB or sdcard but what we really want is something as convenient as Google Contacts which syncronises to a place/server that you control automatically and easily.

Not sure if there's an alternative app out there though for this?
There's Go Contacts, ContactMoney and alternative dialers but I don't think these have alternative sync methods.

I think I'd prefer something from the fDroid/homebrew/commandline way. Perhaps a SyncML solution, or just something that automates the process of exporting contacts, encrypting them with a basic password and uploading to dropbox or an email address.

I purged GoogelContactsSync and GoogleCalendarSync from my device.
For syncing I use SyncMate(free), which I found pretty convenient.

 

[PAragao]

hotmail/corporate sync

This worked fabulously till i decide to use a Hotmail account (with the stock email app), from that moment on the problem reappeared, just instead of trying to store the contacts in gmail, it now tries to store in Hotmail/corporate account!!!!

Has Google hired all the stupid developers that Microsoft fired??? Microsoft is becoming famous for it ability to consider their clients stupid and the attitude: when-know-what-you-want-better-than-you, now Google seems to be going with the same mentality!

Any idea how to stop this on the hotmail account?

p.s. my only workaround was to use the Hotmail app instead of the stock email app, unfortunately the Hotmail app (Microsoft, remember?) thinks i will never need to see any email older than 30 days?!?!?! WTF???

 

[banjax]

i was thinking the same thing, like ftp/sftp backup. it could be done pretty easily but i may not be the person to do it , i havent looked around though and suspect there may already be something already that could do this...

I use MyPhoneExplorer - it syncs my local contacts to my Thunderbird and vice versa. It syncs calendar events too ... so eventually I've got a copy and it's all local. One thing it doesn't do is contacts photos, so I also use SuperBackup to make a copy on my SD card (this way I can get the pictures up quickly).

When contacts are in Thunderbird (I've created there an address book just for syncing the phone) I can re-arrange, edit, etc. and when syncing back the pictures are retained ... Then I do SuperBackup to have a copy of new phone book with pictures.

Regards,...

 

[KariemSoudy]

This worked fabulously till i decide to use a Hotmail account (with the stock email app), from that moment on the problem reappeared, just instead of trying to store the contacts in gmail, it now tries to store in Hotmail/corporate account!!!!

Has Google hired all the stupid developers that Microsoft fired??? Microsoft is becoming famous for it ability to consider their clients stupid and the attitude: when-know-what-you-want-better-than-you, now Google seems to be going with the same mentality!

Any idea how to stop this on the hotmail account?

p.s. my only workaround was to use the Hotmail app instead of the stock email app, unfortunately the Hotmail app (Microsoft, remember?) thinks i will never need to see any email older than 30 days?!?!?! WTF???

i have the same problem, is there any solution to this problem ?
i have done the solution above and it works, but it comes again after setting up my corporate account

 

[capmo]

i have the same problem, is there any solution to this problem ?
i have done the solution above and it works, but it comes again after setting up my corporate account

This little app will do the trick:

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fjsoft.mylocalaccount

After you install it, go to Accounts and create one "MyLocalAccount". After that, all you have to do is to transfer your contacts from the Google account into the "Local contacts" account just created. You can do this with the built-in Export/Import contacts tool.

 

[mrhamed]

f . . k the google, they work for attack to our privacy only :\

 

[miskiab]

Hi, i want to reverse this topic

sync google accounts
It's been a while since I've been through this, but unfortunately I have a similar problem. My problem is "Google account" in accounts and sync. But I can only select google photos when I click on the sync mark. No selection box for contacts. How can I fix that?

The device has clone s3 and ics 4.0.4 on it. The gapps packages available for this release also do not work. It does not synchronize people in any case. I cleaned the data from the applications, I deleted Accounts.db and reinstalled it.

Finally, I found the following lines for Accounts.xml and added it, but still there is no positive situation. What else can I do? Thank you.

Syncable = "true"> <authority id = "3" account = ".." type = "com.google" authority = "com.android.contacts"
<PeriodicSync period = "86400" />
</ Authority>