Contacts app hangs after upgrading to macOS Golden Gate 27.0 on M3 iMac

I just want to share with everyone having this same problem with their Contacts app that I seem to have resolved the Contacts hangup (spinning beachball) ...not permanently, of course, because I didn't change any of the app's code. Nevertheless, for the moment anyway I can continue to use this app on my MacBook Pro. Here's what I did:

1. After reading the suggestions of several others who are experiencing this same problem, I Force-Quit my Contacts app;
2. Then I entered my iCloud account (Apple menu > System Settings... > Apple Account > iCloud > Saved to iCloud > Contacts) and turned off Contacts syncing;
3. Next, I opened my Contacts app; as others had experienced at this point, only a few Contacts records were displaying.
4. I quit the Contacts app and returned to the Apple menu to enter my iCloud account (as in #2, above) and re-enable Contacts syncing.

After that, my Contacts app no longer displays the spinning beachball! Leaving it open for awhile, I noticed the iCloud syncing activity was taking care of removing (from view) some duplicate records that hadn't been displaying prior to the hangup.

Apparently, at least in my case, the whole Contacts app hangup had something to do with the iCloud syncing function. Hopefully the crash reporting data sent to Apple every time one of us has had to Force Quit their Contacts app will lead someone on Apple's Contacts app Team to modify the offending code and release the fixed version in a future update.

Deleting (or, better still, moving to your Desktop temporarily) the file ~Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist and restarting your Mac, seems to correct the issue, but I can't say for how long...

Once it appears to be working, delete the version on your Desktop.

Just happened to my Contacts app, but doesn't resolve within 15 minutes. Also doesn't resolve when I restart my Mac in Safe Mode and try to open Contacts. Is this simply something that I should be allowing hours to resolve?

Thank you - I did what you suggested and it worked for around three weeks, but today I have the 'spinning wheel of death' again (I suspect that it is as a result of the first time I had to actively open my Contacts to retrieve information since updating the OS from 27.0 to 27.0.1.

I retried your technique, but now it is not working...

By the way, I Force Quit, send the crash report, Force Quit, relaunch, send the crash report, Force Quit, relaunch, send the crash report... just hoping that someone at Apple will see this issue and address it ;-)

Glad to have found this community with the same exact problem, the spinning wheel of death when trying to access my contacts after the Golden Gate OS update was installed recently.

Has anyone actually phone-

called Apple to get help with this?

Are there any other steps that we can take?

Chuck Milan

Yup, same here.