You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Contact and Userid Images Disappearing

So I have seen some have experienced this issue already with no solution. I am seeing contact images disappear with a random string being added at the end of phone numbers or in the country field that starts with X-IMAGEHASH or X-ABADR. It also changes any numbers marked as "Mobile" to "Phone". It messes up using Siri to make calls or just trying to call someone with an impacted record because often it adds the string to the end of their number. I should add this can occur even if there is no image associated with the contact but interestingly it seems to be the same contacts every time despite there being no real commonality between them. A restore of contacts back to a time before this began happening had no impact. The next day the same thing occurred. To make things even more complicated my Userid picture on the Mac which references Photos also disappears at the same time. It seems to have something to do with anything that references Photos on the iCloud for the most part but why I could not tell you. Nothing (no third party apps) has access to my contacts or photos. It happens on all devices - iPad, iPhone, Mac M1 Max, Watch.

Posted on Jul 12, 2022 3:06 PM

Similar questions

119 replies

Aug 28, 2022 8:54 PM in response to Netnemesis

Agreed, updating my contacts’ photos is what triggered the HASH being added to my contacts’ fields and then started the cycle of randomly deleting my contacts’ photos within 10-45 minutes after updating them.

Aug 31, 2022 4:06 PM in response to ryantcollier

So I’ve been on Google contacts since I couldn’t resolve this. Anywho, about a week or so ago my Apple ID picture reset (because I guess it’s managed outside of Google contacts ). I left it empty figuring it’s just going to break again. Reapplied my picture about 3 days ago and so far it’s stuck. /shrug.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 1, 2022 12:28 AM in response to scott.w.uhl

Apple have me jumping through relentless hoops constantly creating contacts to see if they will be corrupted overnight after dumping a plethora of diagnostic data. Its becoming somewhat annoying. The current thing they want is under Privacy on my phone to disconnect anything that has access to contacts for 24 hours and AGAIN create test contacts with pictures. To date every time we do this they end up corrupted. I did manage to prove on thing though. Each X-IMAGE HAS string relates to a particular pic in Photos. If you create 4 contacts - 3 with different pics and 1 with the same the 2 that end up the same with have the same string. I still see this as an iCloud sync issue but try convincing Apple. I have told them this is the last test I do for them and then I expect some resolutions.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 1, 2022 12:14 PM in response to scott.w.uhl

The bit I don't get is why does it only happen 24-48 hours later and not immediately if its a pure sync issue because syncing is a constant. Something happens once a day overnight that stuffs it up. Yesterday I disabled (under privacy) anything accessing contacts on my devices which included Signal, Keeper and MS Teams and overnight none of the contacts have stuffed up yet. But it could still happen in the next 24 hours.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 1, 2022 1:01 PM in response to Netnemesis

So do any of you have on your devices one of these 3 apps - MS Teams, Signal or Keeper (password manager)? These are the only 3 that have access to my contacts and they are stable overnight (but that may change). In the interim I am looking for something we all have in common.

Sep 1, 2022 3:24 PM in response to Netnemesis

appreciate the think process, what app could cause this, possibly outside apple ecosystem, as not everyone has the issue, several friends and colleagues don't.

Removed Signal as I suspected it was intrusive towards Contacts

MS Teams running indeed

no password manager

other apps that have access to Contacts: Houdaspot & Cardhop (from App Store)

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 1, 2022 3:27 PM in response to pat-pegasusbay

ok - so the commonality between the two of us is MS-Teams - if you go into Privacy on all your devices, then contacts and turn off MS teams for 24 hours, then create a contact with a photo lets see if it corrupts overnight. If it doesn't we may have found the cause.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 2, 2022 11:26 AM in response to scott.w.uhl

On all devices? I have re-enabled the Signal connection to contacts yesterday and still no issues. It has to be on all devices as one syncing will obviously stuff everything via the iCloud. I turned off access to contacts in IOS devices. Doesn't ask for access on the Mac.

Sep 2, 2022 4:19 PM in response to scott.w.uhl

OK, 24 hrs on, fingers crossed, all iCloud/ MBP M1, Mini M1, iOS, messages, mail, contacts all are intact, have not lost an image yet (photo or icon) of the ±35 common contacts across those apps, after 24 hrs of automatic syncing via iCloud to all devices

PS MS Teams (deep) removed from Macs with AppCleaner, deleted from iOS and deleted iOS MS Outlook as well.

Could I still be smiling in another 24hrs? Fingers crossed

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 2, 2022 4:23 PM in response to pat-pegasusbay

Well for me its 48 hours with no issues - I have re-established the Signal ling to contacts yesterday, leaving MS Teams disconnected, and still no issues. The longest stretch for me without an issue. Lets give it another 24 hours and if so it may have something to do with MS Teams. I didn't deep removed it - just stopped it from accessing contacts via privacy settings.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 3, 2022 1:38 PM in response to Netnemesis

Day 3 and still no contact issues - I will add one thing Apple also go me to do was create a new "me" contact too. I deleted the old one associated with "me" on the systems and created a new one. I noticed at that point whilst other contacts were still getting corrupted that one and its pic were not. It was after I did that that I removed an connections to MS Teams and I have yet to have an issue.

Sep 3, 2022 4:29 PM in response to Netnemesis

i have gone back to my contacts on icloud.com and put a contact image there for one of the ones that was initially a problem. will see how it handles it over next few days. Right now those contacts live only on icloud.com, all my devices now only on google contacts for now.

TheFJ97

Level 1

10 points

Sep 4, 2022 11:50 PM in response to Netnemesis

I had this same problem, but noticed that it only happened with contacts I had edited from my Mac (12.5.1), especially when adding a contact image. It would be fine throughout the day and suddenly mess up during the night. To fix this, I wrote two shortcuts (one to remove all contact images just to be sure, and another to remove X-tags from affected fields, available here). After this, I started adding contact images from my iPhone (15.6.1), and 72 hours later everything still seems fine.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Sep 5, 2022 1:23 AM in response to TheFJ97

Yeah we all agree it works fine if you remove all contact images - but we shouldn't need to do that. I have been going over 4 days since I created a new "me" contact for myself and disconnected MS Teams from being able to access contacts on my IOS devices and since then no issues. Apple L2 support also tell me they have seen no corruption since to my data and if you guys confirm the same it may well be MS Teams is the culprit.

Sep 5, 2022 3:06 AM in response to Netnemesis

3 days without any loss of images on either Macs or iOS Mail/Messages etc., also created a new 'Me' contact as suggested

Teams removed across all devices

growing evidence the Cloud Sync corruption is linked to MS Teams?

at some point I will have to reinstall Teams (for my job) - anybody running Teams, w/o access to Contacts in Privacy, and no longer having photo/icon deletions/field corruptions (with X-mash etc)?

Or should one just wait for Ventura hoping that that issues is solved in the new OS?

Contact and Userid Images Disappearing