iPhone Contacts app stuck on Lists

Yes, it was answered several times. To save you the trouble of actually reading the thread you posted to, tap on All Contacts at the top of the Lists screen. Or go to phone/contacts, which lists all contacts.

On my iPhone SE running 16.6.1

I found that After clicking on Lists I see the title Lists at the top with one line under that.

If there is a '>', click it and it 'folds down' to show:

[three Blue head-shoulders symbol] All iCloud . . . . . (# of contacts) >

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Go ahead and click on the three blue heads, or anywhere in that line.

It will switch to your contacts list, but with iCloud at the top.

That's ok and I have no idea why it changes, but. . . next. . .

Put that App away COMPLETRELY and re-open it as follows:

Close that screen so you can swipe the small version of it completely away (take it out of the background).

Now just open it 'normally' from the usual Contacts Icon on your home screen.

It opens with the title Contacts at the top. DONE.

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I find it very user friendly, and a HUGE improvement on iOS 15, when you couldn’t see your individual contact lists, didn’t know which list a given contact was on, and couldn’t edit them to move contacts between lists or assign a contact to more than one list. You can now do all of these things, and without any of the 3rd party paid apps that you needed with earlier versions if you had more than one list. From the Lists screen just tap on All Contacts to go to view all contacts. And it will stay on that view until you go back to the List view.

If you do not have an All Contacts selection on the Lists screen you can't select it.

Mine only has the option: All iCloud.

So, I played around and found by experimentation:

If I select All iCloud, then close the Contacts COMPLETELY (minimize it then swipe it away) when I restart it from the home screen, it says Contacts at the top.

This is very user hostile.

What is the purpose of having the top say Contacts or iCloud? Are Contacts the ones stored and viewed on the phone - whereas, the iCloud screen shows the contacts stored ON iCloud?

If not, what it the difference and why is there a distinction if they are the came ones?

This is User HOSTILITY at its best.

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All this stuff about "owning" contacts makes no sense.

'Guards,

ASteveOfMany wrote:

If you do not have an All Contacts selection on the Lists screen you can't select it.

Mine only has the option: All iCloud.

As has been posted, and you apparently didn’t read, if all you have is All iCloud that means that all of your contacts sync to your iCloud email account, and you tap on All iCloud to see all of your contacts.

And you don’t have to close and re-open; after you tap All iCloud you can just use the contacts.

Contacts being owned by email servers is not nonsense; it is a FACT. If you delete an email account all of your contacts will be deleted with it, so it is an important FACT to know.

The issue is what you are presented to look at and why - NOT how to figure it out all the time. I know contacts are saved on the phone AND iCloud. What am I looking at and why are there two titles if there isn't a reason for having two of them?

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As I said, I can Select the available iCloud option, close then reopen the app and it shows 'Contacts' at the top.

Contacts are contacts. iCloud also has other data that I have on the phone, so it is technically a poor choice for a title and not user friendly as you can plainly see from questions about it.

If people can't figure it out from what is presented, it is very poor software design -- because it CAN be done so it DOES work that way.

There are so many other 'device' problems we must fight with on a daily basis, this is just another of dozens that are clearly very poorly thought out and clearly user hostile. Apple completely lost the concept of user friendliness.

We're forced to have an iCloud account smaller than the phone's memory and suffer from constant badgering that iCloud it running out of space. . .

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This is a growing problem. I've been in software development long enough to know that Web page usability has been in decline for quite a while and we have medical software already making mistakes for us.

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With the large amount of memory and the processing speed we now have, if you can't figure something it should grab you by the throat, slap you around and push the buttons for you. . .

When I started, we would have killed for this kind of technology.

It's not your fault, but _IS_ poor design, if you can even call it design.

I'm sorry, but when you spend a career dedicated to the highest quality, then have to deal with this, it is frustrating.

No, it is excellent design. If your email address is xyzzy@icloud.com you have an iCloud email account. And if it is plugh@aol.com you have an AOL account. So you would have 2 lists, one for ALL AOL and another for All ICLOUD plus ALL CONTACTS.

But if you only sync contacts to your iCloud account you will only see ALL ICLOUD. The fact that there are other iCloud features is irrelevant, as it is Contacts in this app it pretty clearly means all contacts associated with iCloud, not iCloud backup, or iCloud Photos, or any of the other dozen or so iCloud features. Perhaps the label should be ALL ICLOUD EMAIL SYNCED CONTACTS, but that is implied by the fact that this is the contacts app.

And, btw, those contacts are not using any iCloud space unless you turn on the iCloud sync setting in Settings/[your name]/icloud-contacts.

Lawrence F - You're not reading or understanding some of these posts, and your insistence on "just click All Contacts" doesn't help **when there is NO All Contacts option visible**.

The only fix that worked for my iPhone 13 running the very latest iOS was the steps listed by ASteveofMany on the first page of this (currently) 4 pages of posts. That gave me the All Contacts option back and I was able to use the Contacts app again.

Delete the Contacts app, Then go to the App Store and download it again.

Bob2337,

Thanks. What happens when you tap on "All iCloud" from the list shown in the screenshot?

Cheers.

I get that, but I don't want it to ask every time to click lists, just show the list. This is a bug please fix it.

Great solution to an amazingly annoying problem!

That solved it for me. Thank you.