Google contacts iOS 9 sync problem

As of this post (1/26/16) this problem still exists. It would be great if Apple would address this since it seems to impact so many people (13,401 views as of this writing).

The best work-around that I found (from earlier posts) is to just switch off "Contacts" in Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Gmail then switch it back on. This forces a full re-fresh by deleting all the Gmail contact info and then reloading it. Brute force but it gets the job done and it is fairly quick.

One more thought...

I think that there are two separate issues which are getting mixed up in some responses in this thread. One is the iOS built-in feature (which is broken and which this thread is addressing) which "syncs" Gmail contacts to a local copy on your iPhone (but not iCloud). This is different from the 3rd party apps that sync Gmail contacts to iCloud. You don't need to use iCloud at all to use the Gmail contacts feature that is being discussed here. In my case I have all my contacts in Gmail and nothing in iCloud. To make this work you have to set Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Default Account to be "Gmail". Then if you add new contacts to your phone they get pushed back to Google's servers (assuming all works). If you don't make this change then new contacts would be saved to iCloud. One more thing, if you do the above hack (in my previous post) to force a refresh of your Gmail contacts then it will switch the "Default Account" back to iCloud so this also needs to be fixed every time you do this hack.

Have identical issue.

Don't use icloud for contacts but going to settings>icloud then opening the contacts app and pressing the refresh button causes it to sync with google. If I don't do the above process pressing refresh does nothing. Adding a contact on the phone also causes refresh as does turning contacts off/on etc as others have noted.

This is clearly an easily reproducible bug for ios 9.X with google contacts and push disabled.

My solution: make changes to address book online shut the i-phone off and turn it on and everything will be there.

My story:

Hello-I don't think Apple cares about anything but $$$$ and we are all wasting time here. At night I shut the phone off and keep it in airplane mode so it does not update. I'm fine without the updates. In my experience "UPDATES" kill things like the nice refresh feature and one of the last updates this screwy company made actually put my time zone in UTC. ***! If I make changes on my google contacts using my Windows XP machine, they get updated When I shut the phone off at night and turn it on in the morning.

I don't use i-ANYTHING.

I don't use i-TUNES (I USE A CD RIPPER TO IPHONE UTILITY) works on Windows XP only. I also have another utility that backs up my iphone apps and that program works on windows XP only also.

I'll never get windows 10 but that's another story windows 10 looks like a kid's toy..

I don't use i-CLOUD - I have no use for it. I have my own cloud appliance

I don't have an i-PAD - I have an ASUS tablet..... Ipads are stupid!

I have an IPHONE 6plus (I don't want THAT) but with the problem with the droid was that it had the spinning screen when I swiped my finger over it would not stop spinning so I went with the I-phone. I'm using version 9.1 and very happy with it and will not update it.it's not inconvenient to shut of the phone and turn it on again to make sure everything I changed online carries over to the i-thing.

This is not Russia, I will not be told when I have to update anything. NEW CRAP DOES NOT WORK that's why it's called crap.

Cheers!

I just want to say that ramajam32 answer worked for me. Turning off my iPhone with iOS 9 and turning it back on.

I had tried all the other suggestions. Everything! Here is some of what I tried BEFORE turning off the phone: I had created a new contact on the iPhone and 3 hours later it was still not in Gmail contacts. I updated the Notes on the new contact and 2 hours later it was still not in Gmail contacts. None of the contacts notes that were updated on a another synced iDevice with iOS 7 were appearing on the iPhone with iOS 9 and none of the Notes were syncing to the iOS 9 iPhone. This was over a 4 day period.

After trying all the suggestions on this thread and other threads I finally turned off my iPhone with iOS 9 and turned it back on. Then the new account I had previously created on the phone showed up in Gmail contacts. Then I checked the Notes on the phone and they were all updated! I then checked contacts that had been updated on the other iDevice and they were updated on the iPhone with iOS 9!

I don't know what kind of bug Apple has created here, but I hope they fix it!

Full credit to majabuna for the solution - at least on my iPhone 6+, iOS 9.2.1.

All you have to do is make any edit in the "Notes" field to any Contact on your iPhone and . . . that's it. Done. The phone syncs in a second or two and captures all changes to all Contacts. (Both ways. Make a change in Google Contacts on your Mac or PC and it syncs to your iPhone. Make a Change to the Contact on your iPhone and it syncs in Google Contacts on your Mac or PC.)

FYI (my setup)

Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data [set to "Push"; checked "Manually" at bottom of screen] -> Gmail [set to "Fetch"]

Same issue here as everyone else - in the interim what I've done is just add contacts to my hourly fetch update that I have my calendar set to (so events will update the calendar without me having to open the app first).

Let's hope this gets resolved.

I am also experiencing this problem.

Changes made to Google's contacts

via the Google web page interface

are NOT getting sync'd to Apple contacts

on my iPhone. It's as if the settings on

the iPhone are being ignored. My relevant

settings are:

"Push ON"; &

my account named

"Goggle Contacts via CardDav"

is set to "Fetch";

Fetch setting set to "Hourly"

However, changes made to Apple contacts

using the Apple Contacts app on my iPhone

are sync'd just fine to Google contacts in

the cloud. So, CardDav & push/fetch

appear to work fine in this direction

(Apple iPhone contacts => Google's contacts)

but not in the reverse direction

(Google's contacts => Apple iPhone contacts)!

I am using the workaround(s) mentioned

elsewhere in this article's thread to "force"

a synch. I, like others, make a insignificant

change to an Apple contact on iPhone to

"force" a synch, which causes any changes

made earlier via Google's web interface contacts

to finally be sync'd back down to my iPhone.

Tis problem needs to be fixed by the

Google guru(s) and Apple geniuses ASAP!

the work arounds mentioned work, but the problem still exists.

iPhone 6

Same problem here I even tried the work around and all that happened was the one I added a note to got updated but none of the others synced between the 2.

For years I had a gmail account set up on my iPhone (currently an iPhone 6 running IOS 9.2.1). But if I made a change to a contact or added a new one on my phone, the change never synced to my gmail contacts for that account when I accessed it on my computer. And vice-versa - if I updated a gmail contact on my computer it never synced those changes to my phone. Now it works.

NOTE: When I originally set up this gmail account on on my phone last year, I selected both mail and contacts in Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars section for this account.

Here are the changes I just made:

1. I went to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Add Account>Other>Add CardDAV Account

2. A new window opened on my phone showing:

- Server - I put in "google.com" (no quotes)

- User name - I put in my full gmail address

- Password - I put in my gmail password

- Description - I put in a nickname for my account

3. Once I entered all that information correctly I saw green check-marks for each line and the window closed.

4. I then opened Contacts on my phone and saw that my contacts from that gmail account were populating on the phone. They were already on there (see NOTE above), and were populating again, creating a number of duplicates. I let the process run and waited until the new CardDAV contacts were fully populated (synced).

IMPORTANT:

5. After step 4 was complete, I went back to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars for that specific gmail account and turned the Contacts slider off (from green to gray). A message popped up saying all the contacts for that gmail account would be deleted from my phone, and it asked me if I wanted to proceed. I said yes, because in step 4 all those contacts were populated to my phone via the CardDAV function for this same gmail account.

6. At that point I was in the Contacts list on my phone. In the upper left corner was a button called Groups.

7. I clicked on that button and unchecked all of the groups except for the group associated with that gmail account.

8. I went back to the contacts list and noticed the the word Groups in the upper left corner was gone, and was replaced by an "update circle" (a blue 3/4 circle with an arrow on one end).

9. At that point all of my gmail contacts were in my contacts list. The ones I had updated on my laptop were now on my phone, and the ones I updated on my phone were now on my laptop.

This whole process took about 20 minutes of trial and error because I really didn't know what I was doing. But it worked for me and I hope it works for you too! Good luck.

Having the same problems and after doing some research, it appears that the problem has to do with iOS (9.2.1 in my case) having lost the ability to update and force a sync with the contacts app. As far as I know this problem applies to all accounts set up as an Exchange type server. For instance, if you swipe down in Mail, you will get the updating wheel turning at the top of the screen. You should be able to do the same thing in Contacts/Groups to manually force an update, but it doesn't work. So, I did some testing and came up with the following solution to force iOS to do an update. My solution, which seems to work from both the Exchange Server and from my iPhone is to simply make the following changes to the iPhone in Settings:

In Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars set the Default Account in the Contacts section to iCloud

Change Fetch New Data to Hourly - Push set to off, and the email server set to Fetch, Hourly.

I've only done limited testing right now, so I'm not sure if changing the default account to iCloud is essential, but I do believe that changing to Fetch creates the necessary condition that forces iOS to look for the update from the Exchange server. You can probably set Fetch to Every 15 or 30 Minutes. I chose every Hour to help save battery life.

Please let me know if anyone has success with this or learns any new trick.

Best of Luck

I just upgraded to iOS 9.3 and the problem seems to be gone. I checked both ways: Editing contacts on iPhone and syncing to google contacts and the other way round.

Can somebody confirm that since the workarounds posted here (editing "notes" and by that enforcing sync) didn't really work for me.

Yes! They have finally fixed this issue. Just pull down the contacts list and it updates. One less bug.

I am running IOS 9.3.1 and I still have the problem! Contact changes made on my iMac th a browser are not coming down to my iPad or iPhone. I only use Google for Contacts and this is a major pain.