If you’re using your phone for quite some time, you tend to collect a lot of unwanted contacts. For instance, if you’ve changed places, you don’t need your old landlord’s number, electrician’s, or the plumber’s number. Also, you might have friends who have drifted apart or changed their contact information. In that case, there is no point in keeping their contacts on your phone. This is why we’ll show you how to delete contacts on iPhone, whether it’s a single contact or a bunch of contacts.
How to delete a contact on iPhone
Your iPhone, by default, only allows you to remove contacts individually. So, in this section, we’ll find out how to erase a contact on iPhone.
Step 1: Start the Phone app and tap on the Contacts tab located at the bottom. Or open the Contacts app.
Step 2: Next, locate your contact from your phonebook by scrolling or using the search field. Once you’ve found the contact that you’d want to remove, tap on it.
Step 3: When you’re on your selected contact’s screen, tap on Edit, located in the upper-right. Then scroll down at the bottom and tap on Delete Contact.
Step 4: A popup menu will appear to confirm your choice. If you’ve changed your mind, then tap Cancel. Or, if you want to continue removing the contact, tap on Delete Contact.
Relevant Blog: How to Delete your Voicemail on iPhone
How to delete multiple contacts on iPhone with iCloud
When you have so many contacts to erase from your iPhone, what would you do? You can’t just remove them one by one. It would take a very long time. Unless you have synced your contacts with your iCloud account, In that case, it won’t take much of your time. However, if you want to remove your iCloud synced contacts, you’d need to log in to your iCloud account from a computer. What if you haven’t synced your contacts on iCloud? Then you’d need third-party apps to help you erase multiple contacts at once from your iPhone.
Step-by-step guide on how to delete contacts on iPhone at once:
Step 1: The first step is to login into your icloud.com account using a browser on your computer. Your account should be the same Apple ID you use on your iPhone.
Step 2: Next, select the Contacts icon on the screen. Then, press and hold on to the Command key if you’re using a Mac or the Control key if you’re using Windows, and then choose all the contacts you’d want to delete.
Step 3: Then tap on the Gear icon from the bottom-left of the screen and select Delete from the popup menu. After that, tap on Delete again on the confirmation box that appears.
Find out how to sync your iPhone contacts to iCloud
So, we know that your contacts on your iPhone need to be synced with iCloud for you to delete them more than one at a time. So, here’s how to sync your iPhone contacts to iCloud.
- Open the Settings > Apple ID > iCloud
- Then go to Contacts and turn on its toggle switch.
How to delete multiple contacts on iPhone using an app
So, another way to delete more than one contact on your iPhone at once is by using a contact cleaner app. If you don’t have your iPhone contacts synced with iCloud or don’t want the hassle of logging in to your computer to remove the contacts, this method is for you. You’ll find many apps for deleting multiple contacts at once on the App Store. Here are two apps that you could give a try:
How to delete all contacts on iPhone
Want to erase all the contacts from your iPhone? Even for this, you’d need your iPhone contacts to be synced with iCloud. Or you could try a third-party contact remover app as listed above. Here we will show you how to delete all contacts on your iPhone.
- Open the Settings app
- Tap on Apple ID > iCloud
- Then check whether the switch for Contacts is on. If yes, then tap on it to turn it off
- A popup menu will slide up asking what you want to do with your contacts. Choose Delete from My Phone