Do this by clicking the Apple logo in the top-left corner of the screen, clicking System Preferences, and making sure that Contacts is checked under Apps on this Mac using iCloud. Make sure that iCloud contacts are syncing with your Mac.
(We've also got instructions for deleting multiple contacts in iCloud, too.) How to delete duplicate iPhone contacts on your Macĭeleting duplicate contacts can help your iPhone feel less cluttered overall.ġ. We found a feature in contacts that automatically locates and merges duplicate contacts and cards so you don't have to manually. Talk about a slow process.īut if you have a Mac computer, you can speed it up. This is on top of having to manually scroll through your contact list, which may already be thousands of rows.
To make the process take even longer, you then have to confirm the deletion. Instead, you have to open the contact, tap Edit and then scroll to the bottom to finally hit Delete Contact. iOS doesn't let you manually swipe to delete a contact the way you would with an email. But don't stress, we have a handy hack to streamline your contacts once and for all and you can finally find the information you actually want without sifting through doubles, triples or more copies of the same contact.įor iPhone users, though, this can be a bit of a challenge. These duplicate contacts don't take up much storage space, but it can still be annoying to have to scroll through multiples. Thanks to a pesky bug among the moving cloud-parts, there's a possibility that you will accumulate a collection of doubles in your address book.
Oddly, there's no way to select multiple contacts on an iPhone or iPad running iOS 11, so this manual method is the best workaround, although bear in mind it only applies to contacts synced to iCloud. If you don't have access to your Mac you can remotely delete duplicate entries in your Contacts list in the following way.
How to Remove Duplicate iCloud Contacts on PC and Mac To merge the duplicate cards and information, click the Merge button. A dropdown dialog will appear telling you how many duplicate cards were found that either have the same name but contain different information, or have both the same name and the same information.
Launch the Contacts app on your Mac (found in Applications/Contacts).How to Merge and Remove Duplicate Contacts on your MacĪs with any computer procedure that involves deleting data, make sure you have a backup of your system before following these steps. Unless you intentionally keep certain information for the same contact separated out for whatever reason, duplicate cards will add nothing but irritation to your day, so here we're going to show you how to merge and/or remove them, whether you're sat at your Mac or not. They can also appear seemingly out of nowhere after setting up iCloud Contacts on your Mac for the first time. If you've been maintaining and migrating the same Contacts list across Macs over the years then you've probably come across your fair share of duplicate contact cards.