How To Bulk Delete Contacts On Iphone

There always comes a time when you do spring cleaning on your iPhone. This usually happens when you're changing or upgrading your phone. Spring cleaning your iPhone includes uninstalling unnecessary apps, removing unwanted media, and deleting contacts that you no longer use. These contacts may be people you just no longer keep in touch with.

It's pretty easy to delete a contact from your contacts list. However, if you're planning to delete a bunch, it might take you a while especially if you're doing it the usual way. There are some tips and tricks that you can use to make this task much faster to accomplish. Hopefully, this guide would be of help to you come your iPhone spring cleaning time.

How to Delete A Contact the Usual Way

You should know that once you delete a contact from your iPhone, it's permanent. If your iPhone is synced with your other Apple devices, this contact will be deleted there as well. If the contact is deleted from your e-mail account, then this gets deleted from all devices using that account. Knowing all this, here is how you delete a contact from your iPhone the usual way:

Tap the Contacts app.
Search for the contact you wish to delete and tap the contact name.
Select "Edit." This will show you a list of actions that you can do with this contact.
Scroll to the bottom-most portion of the list. Select "Delete Contact."
A window will prompt for confirmation. Select "Delete Contact" on this new window to permanently delete the contact from your contacts list.

How to Remove All of Your Contacts for An Account

If you just want to remove all your contacts from a specific account, there's an easy way to do this. You can simply turn Contacts off for the account you no longer wish to see. Follow these steps to get rid of all these contacts from your list in one go:

Open the Settings app.
From the list, select "Passwords & Accounts."
Select the account that has the contacts that you wish to remove.
Turn off "Contacts."
A window will prompt for confirmation. Select "Delete from My iPhone" and you're done.

A Quick Way to Delete Contacts on iPhone Using iCloud

Now, if you want to mass-delete contacts from your iPhone, you can use iCloud to accomplish this. However, you have to make sure that you're already using iCloud in the first place. Because if your iCloud is enabled for Contacts, that means that all your contacts are stored in the cloud. This also means that all your devices using iCloud are synced.

To delete multiple contacts on your iPhone, the trick is to use the web version of iCloud on your Mac. Instead of using your iPhone, this is what you should do:

Using a laptop or a desktop, open your browser and go to iCloud.com.
Enter your Apple ID and password and log in.
Once you're on the main page, click on "Contacts."
Highlight and select all the contacts you wish to delete from your list.
After this, click on Settings. It's represented by a gear icon located at the bottom left portion of your screen.
Click on "Delete." A window will prompt for confirmation. Select "Delete" on this new window to permanently delete the selected contacts.

An Alternative to Bulk-Deleting Contacts is Third-Party Apps

If you're not using iCloud on your iPhone, there are still other ways to quickly delete several contacts from your list. There are several apps on the App Store that you can download and use. These apps are specifically designed so you can edit your contacts by groups. While these apps offer in-app purchases for advanced features, the mass-delete feature is free. They're also usually user-friendly and quite easy to navigate and use.

One of the apps that you can use is called Groups. Here's how to get started:

Download the Groups app from the App Store.
Open the Groups app.
Next, allow the app to access your contacts when prompted.
From the list, select "All Contacts."
Select all the contacts that you wish to delete from the list.
Once you're done, tap on "Choose Action" located at the top of the screen.
A pop-up menu will appear. Tap on "Delete Contacts."
A window will prompt for confirmation. Select "Remove from my iPhone" and that's it. The selected contacts are now deleted from your contacts list.

If your iPhone is synced with your other Apple devices, then these contacts would be deleted from there as well. As you can see, it's fairly easy to do this task as long as you know how to navigate through your iPhone. With these guides, you should now be able to delete a bulk of your contacts on your iPhone with ease.