i have duplicate contacts in iCloud and on my devices... how do I clean that up (each place i go online to find out, leads me back here.
I mistakenly merged contacts in from my iMac to i cloud. How do I remove the duplicates?
If you have signed in with same Apple ID and password on the same network in Mac and iPhone or other apple devices the contacts on each device will get synced , if the same contacts are in devices they will be seen as duplicates ( as if you had already created contacts in Mac and the same are in iPhone ) .
To avoid it , disconnect the desired device by just signing out from Apple ID account , then delete the duplicate contacts in each device .
Also you can merge duplicate contacts https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203565