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.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
💡 Did you know?
⏺ If you can't accept iCloud Terms and Conditions... Learn more >
⏺ If you don't see your iCloud notes in the Notes app... Learn more >
⏺ If you can't accept iCloud Terms and Conditions... Learn more >
⏺ If you don't see your iCloud notes in the Notes app... Learn more >
I routinely create and update contacts on my phone, very infrequently on my mac. Both machines are sharing info through the cloud. Even after deleting duplicates on either machine, duplicates reappear. Is there a SINGLE place for contacts that I should be using?
MacBook Pro (M3, 2023)
Thanks for doing all this.
So the issue is with the Mac. On the Mac, turn off Contacts in System Settings > [your name] > iCloud, when prompted choose to delete the contacts. Shut down your Mac and start it in safe mode. This should clear some cache files and hopefully what I suspect is cached contacts. Wait a few minutes and restart the Mac in normal mode. Then turn on Contacts in System Settings > [your name] > iCloud.
If the issue persists, disconnect your Apple Account (Apple ID) in System Settings > [your name], when prompted choose to delete the contacts, reboot the Mac, reconnect your Apple Account and activate iCloud synchronization for Contacts.
This is what I got from someone: So the issue is with the Mac. On the Mac, turn off Contacts in System Settings > [your name] > iCloud, when prompted choose to delete the contacts. Shut down your Mac and start it in safe mode. This should clear some cache files and hopefully what I suspect is cached contacts. Wait a few minutes and restart the Mac in normal mode. Then turn on Contacts in System Settings > [your name] > iCloud.
This did not work.
Next suggestion was: If the issue persists, disconnect your Apple Account (Apple ID) in System Settings > [your name], when prompted choose to delete the contacts, reboot the Mac, reconnect your Apple Account and activate iCloud synchronization for Contacts.
This is what I will do over the weekend.
Could you "tag" one of the duplicates (by changing or adding just one piece of information) and see where the modification propagates to. Watch for:
If the modification occurs on iCloud, turn off Contacts in Settings > [your name] iCloud on all your devices except the Mac. When prompted, choose to erase the contacts (don't worry, they are still stored in iCloud).
On the Mac, repeat the duplicate elimination procedure. Note that you may have to do that several times to get rid of all the duplicates. Then go to iCloud.com and see if the duplicates are gone.
If so, on just one of the other devices, turn on Contacts in Settings > [your name] iCloud and observe what happens with duplicates. If everything looks good, turn on Contacts on th remaining devices.
Issue didn't go away. No matter where I edit contacts, they replicate almost immediately across my devices. Is there ONE place I could know my contacts are correct? In addition to replicating randomly, several just disappear.
Right now my icloud contact file has 943 entries, after cleaning it up. I copied the contacts, turned off contacts in settings, and then turned it back on. For a very few minutes, my mac and iphone had the same number of contacts. And before my eyes the mac list grew to 1,156, but my phone and icloud remained at 9463. I can't figure out where the duplicates are coming from, and some of them are from previous versions (added a *) of the same contact. Where are they coming from and why?
Happy to say my duplicates are gone! The magic was signing out of my Apple ID, rebooting and then reactivating my contacts. Now my iPhone and my laptop are in synch. Perhaps the earlier suggestion to shut and reboot in safe mode had something to do with it, - maybe. Seems like the best steps going forward is to only update contacts in the cloud, not on any other device.
Many thanks for all your help!
Have you looked at this article: If you see duplicate contacts after setting up iCloud Contacts - Apple Support?
Either your Mac or iPhone is corrupted , even after deleting duplicates they reappear , erase the iPhone Erase iPhone - Apple Support and Mac Erase your Mac - Apple Support , reinstall them .
Seems that whatever I do, duplicates randomly reappear in all my devices.
Are you sure these contacts are not coming from another source such as Gmail or Microsoft?
No, I'm not sure. How would I know?
Go to System Settings > Internet Accounts and, for each account (if you have several), see if Contacts is turned on. If it is, turn it off temporarily to see if the duplicates vanish.
Great! I'm glad you got it to work.
Constantly getting duplicate contacts i phone and mac
