Gmail contacts can be a little confusing — especially once you realise that the popular email service automatically dumps everyone you cyber-converse with into a big "Other Contacts" directory. That makes it easy to autocomplete emails to people Gmail thinks you might interact with again at some future point, but it can also cause a little confusion when unintended names or email addresses appear in your "To:" field.

I recently did a little digging to find third-party apps for managing your address book that were better than Apple’s default Contacts app.

There aren’t any. At least, none that I found were worth using for more than a day (or even installing on my iPhone to begin with). And even the process of letting others have access to your contacts feels troubling, because you have no idea what other companies are doing with the information you provide.

You’ve been meaning to respond to someone for a while now. Actually, it’s past the acceptable amount of time to answer, so you let it go. And go. It’s eventually been so long you assume you will never be able to make contact with this person again — until you need something.

I get three kinds of texts.

Contacts with cat pupils or neon colours can be fun, but are you sure you want to put a piece of plastic from a costume store into your eye?

Mac: Flexibits, creators of Lifehacker's favourite calendar app Fantastical, has released its command-line approach to contacts with Cardhop. This new contacts app is oriented around actions rather than your contacts database; you mainly use it by writing commands, kind of like talking to Siri. It's a potentially compelling interface -- if you can remember to use it.

If you've got a lot of work contacts, you probably want to keep them organized, grouped together, and separate from your friends and family. If you can't be bothered creating multiple folders and subsections for your contacts list, try reader trickycoolj's simple trick instead.

Mac: If you need to dump an address into your contacts app, it's usually a comically cumbersome process of bouncing between data fields. Interact Scratchpad is a simple little app that does all that for you.

3D Touch makes it easy to quickly pull up four of your favourite contacts from your iPhone's home screen, but the four that appear there might not be your most contacted people. How-To Geek shows off how to change that.

If you have a contact in your phone who has multiple emails or phone numbers, say for work, home, and cell phone, it's easy to lose track of which number bubbles up to the top when you search for it. How-To Geek points out that you can set up a default number that simplifies this.

iOS: iOS 10 adds a new feature to contacts called Emergency Bypass. With this setting, you can make it so that any time a specific contact tries to get in touch with you your phone will make a sound.

Android: Google's Contacts app is handy, but it's always been a bit barebones. Now, it's getting a little bit better with easier ways to manage your labels and remove the duplicates from your lists.

Water is great for cleaning most things, but not so much for your contacts -- unless you want an eye infection. Here's why you should never clean or store your contacts with water, and why should always use the cleaning solution your eye doctor recommends instead.

iOS: Managing contacts on iOS is not a particularly pleasant experience, and organising any kind of group chat over email or text is a chore. Interact is a contacts manager that simplifies both of those things.

Android: Some apps grab you by surprise and leave you saying, "Where has this been all my life?" Drupe is one of those apps for me. With one swipe, you can choose which app you'd like to use to talk with a contact right now.

Android: Google's released the stock phone and contacts apps to the Play Store, breaking them away from Android, which means we'll start to see more regular updates with sweet new features.

Android/iOS: Updating your contacts every time your friends change their info can be annoying, especially if you don't know they have changed it. Addappt, on the other hand, is a social contacts app that updates automatically.

Contact lenses are great, but a recent report by the CDC found that 99% of contact lens wearers reported at least one bad hygiene habit. With that in mind, let's take a quick look at exactly how you're supposed to care for them.

Ordering takeaway food isn't exactly difficult, but why not make it easier? Take a photo of the menu and make it the restaurant's contact photo on your phone. Next time you're craving delivery, you can skip searching for the menu in your junk drawer.