Google Contacts now lets you spice up profile photos with monograms and emojis
The new customization options are rolling out now

Back in 2024, Google rolled out a change that overrode user-selected contact photos on Google Messages, and replaced them with the said contact's Google account avatars if they linked the two profiles. The change, of course, did not sit well with users, especially for those that had selected dedicated profile pictures for their contacts for easy identification.