Q: the "contacts" icon disappeared from iphone

When you say you searched all of the folders, are you saying you manually searched? If so, try Spotlight. If it locates it, then it will have the name of the folder it is in to the right of the search area. If that still does not yield it, then go to Settings>General>Reset>Reset Home Screen Layout. That should recover it. This is a native iOS app and cannot be deleted.

Your Contacts icon must be on the iPhone somewhere ... assuming your iPhone has never been jailbroken, hacked, or run beta software.

You can use Spotlight to find it.  Swipe down on the home screen starting somewhere below the top.  Type "Contacts" into the resulting search bar.

If you like, you can also do Settings > General > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout.

You can also access Contacts through the Phone app. It's exactly the same information as in the standalone app.

This worked for me. I followed your suggestion, dragged the home screen down to get Spotlight search, searched for contacts and saw it was somehow in a folder where upon I dragged it back to my home screen. Thanks.

You're welcome.

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I found a quick fix, it is annoying, but at least it works.  When it looks like your contacts are all intact, yet when you actually go to search for one in particular, and the response is "nothing found" (grrrr) here is what you have to do: Go into "Groups" (top left corner) uncheck all of your groups then check them again. Go back into your "search" bar and voila, your contacts will find the name you were looking for moments ago.  Why? I have no idea, but it works.  This is a lame glitch which someone at Apple needs to correct and repair. Hope this helps! 

After downloading ios10 on my iPhone last week I noticed my Contacts App was gone,,, went to

this site for help, did the Reset Home screen that was suggested and what a mess!! Lost all my folders as Apps all over the place.

SO I asked Siri and she told me to go to App Store and download the Contacts app!!! I did and all is well with all my contacts in the app!!

With the release of iOS 10, users were given the ability to delete some of the native applications. That ability never existed in the past, and did not when this thread was started one year ago. I'm glad you were able to resolve your issue, but at the time the thread was started, the Reset of the Home Screen layout was the best answer if the user could not find the Contacts app.