Q: iOS 9 Contacts Search Freezing - Fixed!!

In brief …

• iPhone 6 128GB persistently freezing when attempting to search 1852 contact cards.
• This issue appeared to be related to an update from iOS 8 and was not remedied with successive iOS updates or clean installs and rebuilds.
• I remedied and experimentally replicated issue of app freezing being associated with one contact containing a very large note (173,274 characters – 31,928 words)
• This huge ‘note’ had evolved with successive duplicates of this card being cloned … and subsequently merged.
• The offending note was relatively easy and quick to find. See below!

The long version …

Sometime shortly after upgrading from a 3GS to an iPhone 6 contact searches (both in the contacts app and from the search pane within the phone app) began freezing. And a bit later I was not even able to find contacts using Spotlight on my phone. All the while the contacts app on my aging MacBook Pro (13” mid-2012 - with an SSD) was able to pull off searches with relative ease!

The issue with my phone was debilitating and coincided with an issue where syncing the photos off my phone with the Photos app on the Mac would crash. (Still have no idea what was causing this!!)

In the past months I ended up spending countless hours on the phone with Applecare, being escalated … and doing all of the usual resets and fresh installs of iOS (Restore iPhone via Recovery mode) etc.

Visited an Apple store recently where they threw their hands in the air and gave me a replacement (new??) phone. When I got home I again dutifully created a new phone rather than restore from a previous backup.

Outcome? There was the same problem … exactly the same as before!!!

Booked another appointment with genius at Apple Store …

Five hours later, and after half a dozen genii had dabbled, I was still without a solution. Needless to say rather unhappy with prognosis that the “next iOS update would fix the problem … nad we have done everything we can for you.”

Within the week iOS 9.3 was released. I updated the phone, but still no change at all. Contacts continued to freeze whenever I attempted to search.

I had discovered however that when I restricted a search from within Contacts app to a specific group (I had 29 Groups and 1852 contact cards) … the search would work as normal. This was first noted at the Apple store but it was interpreted as evidence that iOS 9 was unable to search/index that many cards, and that by restricting the search it was only having to deal with fewer cards.

Continued experimenting - searching in individual Groups successively - identified two groups in which searches would freeze the contacts app.

A Genius had earlier suggested that a ‘corrupt’ contact my crash the app, and I now saw (given that the newly released iOS had not remedied the situation) evidence pointing to this as a possibility. I had earlier devised how I might narrow down my contacts data base to identify which card was the offender. Though I had no idea how I might identify multiple offenders, or further identify what the corruption was and how to prevent it in the future!

With the narrowed data set of a specific group containing just 66 cards I deleted half of them (L-Z) and waited a few seconds for the changes to be pushed to iCloud and back down to my iPhone. This identified that the culprit was hiding in A-K. (Confirmed also that L-Z were fine.)

I likewise dissected the remaining contacts, with each move narrowing the field!

It was down to a contact in in the K-J range, then down to a stand-off between the Jacksons and the Johnstones. The three Jacksons all failed to trigger a melt down.

So I was now pretty confident that one (or both) of the two Johnstones was the offender. Kelly came up clean, while the card for close friends Bruce and Susan was at last exposed as the troublemaker!

And what was so offensive?

At some point in the last ten years I had copied and pasted five short articles Susan had published ... into the notes section of the card ... never with any problem (with any earlier iOS) or warning of impending doom.

With the duplication (and subsequent merging) of contacts, this had swollen to a significant 31,928 words (or 173,274 characters inc spaces!!) apparently exceeding the gag reflex of the iOS. The original note was only a tenth of that size, and I am uncertain just how bloated the notes section of this contact had become before trouble emerged.

I have been able to replicate the problem by creating a test contact and loading the notes pane with text. 20,000 characters or 3600 words sees the contacts app in iOS9.3 become laggy. Shift the decimal place to the right and it all comes to a grinding halt.

For me, the problem has been simply solved!! Simple 'Delete' a set (Delete > Confirm Delete) and then where necessary 'Undo' (Command-Z)

Even without the smaller group of contacts I could have searched the entire data set of almost 2000 contacts in just 11 ‘moves’. And in only 16 'moves' you could carve your way through an address book holding an Apple specified maximum of 50,000 contact cards!!

Thanks Susan! Enroute, I enjoyed a good read (especially your soul-searching article ‘Take a good look at yourself’) and scored a brand new replacement for my iPhone that was less than 12 months old!

And to everyone else out there, I hope this is useful to someone!!

Apple’s advise regarding the ‘limitations’ of contacts functionality in the Apple ecosystem does not appear to specify this limitation, in plain English at least. (See https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT202158)

I have posted to www.apple.com/feedback re issue and my solution.