Why won't iphone contacts sync with Google?

First and foremost, thank you so much for your detailed instructions. I did all of the steps that you stated; however, my google contacts still don't seem to have my recently added contacts on my phone. Could you give me reasons why my phone didn't push it's contacts to my gmail account? Thank you!

Thank you! After looking at several complicated options, this was simple and successful! Thank you!

I struggled with this a lot and couldn't find very good directions on the web. But I think I finally figured it out. There are three steps to make the sync bidirectional (both from/to your idevice/google) and ongoing (not a one time sync).

1. Go to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Add Account. Choose Google and enter the required information.

This should create a one time sync and suck down your google info to your phone. (They will get out of sync as you make changes on either end, without further configuration)

2. Staying in Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars you must select the Default Accounts for EACH of the Mail, Contacts and Calendar apps. The Mail and Contacts section of this page (Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars) calls the default: "Default Account"; the Calendar section calls it a "Default Calendar".

This will now make your idevice push future changes back up to your Google acct. (but future changes on the Google end still won't flow down to your Idevice)

3. Still on the Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars page, select "Fetch New Data". You must do two things here: a) ensure for Google/Gmail it is set to 'Fetch' (as of oct 2015, push is not an option); and then further down this same page, b) change the Fetch schedule from the default (Manually) to whatever time period you would like.

This should now make future changes on the Google end come back down to your idevice

hope this helps others

@whateverxx thanks for the summary and for confirming there's no "Push" option for syncing Google contacts in iOS 9.1. One more thing: if you don't want to wait 15 minutes for the sync, there are non-obvious ways to force the sync. You can keep "Fetch" at Manually then, presumably saving battery.

I just got a new iphone 6s after years on a trusty Android phone, and am facing the exact same problem regarding Google contacts sync. My hundreds and thousands of contacts on Google are not syncing to the new iphone. Calendar, photos and messages have all synced fine, but contacts, which is the most important item, has not synced at all. I have tried every solution to this problem that has been suggested in this thread. In addition, I have spent 3-4 hours on the phone with Apple tech support who have also basically given the same solutions, but to no avail.

I must say I am terribly disappointed in this much vaunted Apple. I was really looking forward to my first Apple product, a brand new cutting edge iphone, but it is unable to perform the most basic feature, i.e. seamless syncing of contacts with Google. Even the cheapest available Android phone in the market is able to perform this basic feature which my new iPhone can't. As a long-standing Android user, I am most disappointed in this failure by Apple.

Google's contact feature is world class and I want to continue using it on my iPhone. I don't want to make Outlook or iCloud as my default contact storage. Sadly, this poor functionality of iPhone is not letting me do this.

I feel like I just should gift this phone to my old mother, because without dynamic syncing of contacts this iPhone is only good for playing video games and taking photos.

Regards,

a very disappointed first time Apple user

Great instructions but new contacts added to phone in last month won't copy up to google account. Any other ideas?

Alas, I've tried all the ideas on this string and NONE work. Contacts created on my iPhone 6s running ios 9.. still do not appear in my Google Contacts after 20 minutes!d This is one big reason I was an Android fan for so long...as well as the ease of Gmail and Exchange accounts. Is there anyone who has another thought on how to get iPhone contacts up to my Google Contacts? Thanks.