ConnectYou: an MD3 contacts and SMS app that stays on the device

A contacts app and an SMS app in one package

Connect You is described plainly as a privacy focused contacts and SMS messenger app built with MD3, and the feature list is short enough to read in one pass. It uses the Android contacts system API, it can create, edit and delete contacts, and it supports phone numbers, emails, addresses and events. SMS is a first class feature rather than an afterthought: receiving, sending and deleting SMS are all listed as supported.

That combination is the whole proposition. Plenty of Android apps do one job: a dialer, a messaging client, an address book. Connect You merges the address book with the SMS client in a single app, and it is written in Jetpack Compose with Kotlin, which is visible in the repository layout through the app/ module, build.gradle.kts, settings.gradle.kts, gradle.properties, and the Gradle wrapper files gradlew and gradlew.bat.

The audience is narrower than the category name suggests. Anyone worried about data collection from a contacts app will find the design relevant, since the app works through the system contacts provider rather than maintaining a second copy of your address book inside the app's own database. The cost of that choice is that the app can only offer what the platform's contact model exposes, and what it does not offer is worth reading the feature list for carefully. The list has no entry for account sync, cloud backup, call history, or encrypted message storage.

The homepage given for the project is https://you-apps.net, and the topics listed for the repository are android, contacts and kotlin.

MD3 with light and dark themes as the interface contract

The user interface work is described with unusual brevity, so it is worth being precise about what the project actually claims: MD3, in a variant the project labels You, with both a dark and a light theme. The MD3 baseline described in the README is a stylistic choice rather than a technical one, and the README does not document customisation hooks, theme colours, or a settings screen.

The build pipeline follows the same pattern. There is a fastlane/ directory at the top level of the repository, and it contains the metadata used for store listings, including the English language images under fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/, including the app icon used in the header. That directory structure tells you release screenshots and descriptions are produced through fastlane rather than assembled by hand, which is a good sign for a project that publishes tagged versions.

The other thing the layout reveals is the scale of the operation. Alongside the standard Android project files there is a .idea/ directory, which means the JetBrains IDE configuration is committed, and a .github/ directory for issue templates and workflows. A contributor arriving with a pull request finds the conventional entry points already in place.

What is missing from the documentation is as informative as what is present. There is no roadmap, no changelog beyond the release tags, and no description of the accessibility work behind the MD3 implementation. If visual polish and the exact iconography matter to you, the release assets on GitHub are the only evidence offered.

Going through the Android contacts system API

The single most consequential line in the feature list is the one that says the app uses the Android contacts system API. That decision determines what Connect You can and cannot do, and it is the reason the app can be described as privacy focused without needing to run a server.

Because the app reads and writes through the platform's contact provider, a contact you create in Connect You is a contact in the system address book. It appears in the dialer, in the messaging app, and anywhere else the platform exposes it. The same applies to edits and deletions. There is no second copy of the address book to keep in sync, and there is no import step when you move to a new phone, because the phone already holds the data.

The cost is the mirror image. The app inherits the limits of the platform contact model. Supporting phone numbers, emails, addresses and events means the app covers the common fields, and the platform provider decides how those are structured, deduplicated, and merged with account backed sources. A contact that exists only in a Google account is still an account backed contact on the device, and how that reconciles with locally created entries is behaviour of the system provider rather than of Connect You.

This also shapes the permission story. An app that keeps its own database needs broad storage permissions. An app that goes through the contacts system API asks for the contacts permission and works with what the provider exposes. The project does not enumerate the runtime permission list the app requests, so the practical way to check what you will be asked for is to install it and read the system dialog, then confirm the outcome in the app's own contact list.

SMS on Android 16 and above needs restricted permissions

The one piece of operational guidance in the project documentation is a note about SMS, and it is a note worth reading before you install anything. To use the SMS feature on Android 16 and above, the app has to be allowed to use restricted permissions, and the project links to a separate write-up on granting send and read SMS permissions on Android.

That is the platform tightening its grip on the messaging role, and it is a genuine failure mode for a first time user. An install on a current Android device can look like a partial failure, where contacts work and messages do not, and the reason is a permission grant that lives in system settings rather than in the app. The distinction between an app that cannot send SMS and an app that has not yet been granted the ability to send SMS is the difference between a bug report and a settings change.

Send, receive and delete are all in scope for the app, so this matters for a second reason beyond sending. Reading and deleting require their own grants, and a messaging app that can only receive is not much use for cleaning up an inbox.

The granted permissions are also not permanent by nature, and the project gives no guidance on what happens after a system update revokes them, or on whether the app prompts for re-granting. The linked write-up is the project's own recommendation for that situation, which is the right place to look rather than an issue tracker.

Getting the app: F-Droid, GitHub releases, and the Gradle project behind them

There are two documented ways to obtain Connect You. The first is F-Droid, listed as the Get it on F-Droid badge and pointing at the package com.bnyro.contacts. The second is GitHub, through the releases page of the repository, which is where the tagged builds live.

The release history shows a project on a steady but not rapid cadence: v12.0 was published on 2026-07-04, v11.4 on 2026-06-08, and v11.3 on 2026-02-19. The version numbers suggest a fairly heavy major release rhythm, with the major bump landing the largest visible change and the minor releases carrying smaller work between them. The project does not include a changelog, so the notes attached to each tag on the releases page are the only record of what changed in a given build.

If you want to build from source instead, the repository is a standard Gradle Android project. The wrapper is present as gradlew and gradlew.bat alongside build.gradle.kts, settings.gradle.kts and gradle.properties, and the application module sits in app/. The presence of the wrapper scripts means the build expects a specific Gradle distribution to be downloaded on first run rather than a system wide install. The project does not give a build walkthrough, a required JDK version, or an Android Studio version, so expect to follow the standard Android Studio open and run path, and to consult the fastlane/ directory if you want to reproduce the store listing assets.

The project also ships an F-Droid listing under a package name that does not match the Connect You branding, which is a naming inconsistency worth knowing about before you search for it.

GPL-3.0, Weblate, and a single small team

Connect You is licensed under the GNU General Public License, and the licence terms are summarised in plain terms: you can use, study and share it as you want. The LICENSE file sits at the repository root. The practical implication is that a fork, a modified build, or a redistribution carries the same copyleft obligations as the original, so a company embedding this code into a larger product should read the licence text with its own counsel rather than rely on a summary.

Translation is handled through Weblate, with the project hosted at hosted.weblate.org under the you-apps organisation, and the project page embeds the Weblate widget for the Connect You project. That is a sensible division of labour for a multilingual community and it means translators do not need to know anything about Gradle or Kotlin to contribute strings. The icon design is credited separately to M00NJ.

Development conversation happens on Matrix, in the you-apps room at matrix.to, while bug reports and feature requests go to the GitHub issue tracker, and the project asks that every requested field in the issue template be filled in. Code contributions follow the normal fork and pull request route, and the README says plainly that all contributions are welcome.

On maintenance, the last push was on 2026-07-30, and the tagged releases land on the dates listed above. The project is small, with an icon designer, a translator community, and a maintainer who publishes versioned builds rather than daily commits, which is a sensible pattern for a consumer app but does mean that support for a new Android release will follow the platform rather than precede it.

What the feature list does not include

Reading the published feature list against the app itself is the fastest way to see where Connect You is the wrong tool. There is no account system, no contact synchronisation, no cloud backup, and no call log feature in the list. There is no mention of RCS, MMS, or group messaging, and the SMS support is described in the plainest terms: receiving, sending and deleting.

Some of those absences are deliberate and defensible. A privacy focused app that refuses to hold your address book in its own storage has already decided that the platform provider is the single source of truth, and pulling a server or an account system back in would undo that. The trade is honest: you get a clean, local, dependency free contacts and SMS experience and you give up the ability to move contacts around independently of whatever the phone's provider does.

The other absence is documentation. The documentation does not describe the permission set the app requests, does not explain how the app resolves duplicate contacts created through different sources, does not document any data export path, and does not state which Android versions are supported. The GitHub topic list includes android, contacts and kotlin, and the project relies on the platform's own contact model, but the version floor is not written down anywhere in the documentation you are given.

The final gap is scale. This is a small project with a recent push and three releases across a year, and it depends on the platform for its most important permission, on F-Droid and GitHub for distribution, and on Weblate and Matrix for its community. If a phone maker further restricts the messaging role, the SMS half of this app is the half that breaks first, and nothing in the repository suggests a plan for that beyond the linked Android 16 guidance.

Editorial conclusion

ConnectYou suits people who want a plain contacts and SMS app with MD3 light and dark themes that ships through F-Droid and stays out of the cloud, and it does not suit anyone needing contact sync across accounts, backup, or a richer messaging experience. Before you install it, check whether your device maker still allows the SMS role, since on Android 16 and above the project says you must grant restricted permissions, and confirm that the contact fields you rely on, particularly events, render correctly against the contacts system API on your Android build.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: GPL-3.0
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. you-apps/ConnectYou on GitHub