With Apple devices, you can't neither simply swipe a contact and delete it nor mass delete undesired contacts at once. In this article, we have listed for you two different ways under different circumstances to delete all/multiple contacts from iCloud or from other Apple devices.
When phone numbers, email addresses, and contact details on your iPhone start to pile up, you will probably receive a notification warning you that your iPhone storage is full. Undoubtedly, you can backup contacts to iCloud to restore some storage space to iPhone, but there’s also a limit to storage in iCloud, which makes it necessary to have a “house clean” from time to time.
However, many Apple users find it difficult to delete contacts from iCloud and iPhone as well, since Apple doesn’t allow batch-delete on iPhone itself. The following sections cover a comprehensive tutorial that will walk you through how to delete all/multiple contacts from iCloud site and from iPhone.
Warning: With iCloud enabled, deleting contacts with iCloud will be synced to your devices. So we do suggest you backup your contacts to your computer in case of any data loss or unsync your device beforehand.
To unsync your device with iCloud: Go to "Settings" > "Apple ID" banner> Tap "iCloud" > Then toggle off the Contacts option.
After backup contacts or turning off iCloud from your device, you can follow the next part, we will show you how to delete contacts from iCloud whether in batches or in all at one time.
Step 1: Sign in to iCloud.com and go to “Contacts” from the main menu.
Step 2: Press the “Ctrl” button on your keyboard to select the contacts you want to delete from the contact list on the right side.
Step 3: After selecting, press “Delete” button on your keyboard and confirm the deletion.
Step 1: Sign in to iCloud.com and go to “Contacts” from the main menu.
Step 2: Click the gear “Settings” button in the lower left corner.
Step 3: Choose “Select All” in the actions menu to select all the contacts on the page.
Step 4: Click the gear button again and select “Delete”.
Step 5: Confirm the deletion in the pop-up to delete all your contacts.
If you just want to clean up your iCloud storage and delete contacts from iCloud instead of from your Apple devices, make sure your Contacts iCloud sync is turned off and follow the same operations mentioned above to delete contacts from iCloud while keeping them on your devices.
A side note: You can sign in to iCloud.com on iPad, Mac or Windows PC to delete contacts from iCloud. Unfortunately, you can’t sign in to iCloud.com on iPhone to manage/delete your contacts.
Technically speaking, it’s impossible to sign in to iCloud.com on iPhone to manage you Contacts, which is only available on a computer/iPad. However, when you don’t want to sign in to iCloud to delete contacts but just want contacts on your iPhone deleted, there’s an alternative that enables you to delete contacts from iPhone, even though there’re certain restrictions.
The subsequent section gives a tutorial on how to delete contacts from iPhone.
This tutorial presumes you are syncing iPhone Contacts with iCloud. If your Contacts is not synced with iCloud, it’s impossible to delete all contacts from iPhone at one time.
Delete all contacts from iPhone
If you want to keep the synced contacts on iCloud but delete all of them from your iPhone, you can achieve this using iPhone by unsyncing Contacts with iCloud in a single tap.
Step 1: Open the “Settings” on your iPhone and tap your Apple ID.
Step 2: Go to “iCloud” on the Apple ID page
Step 3: Toggle “Contacts” switch off under “Apps using iCloud”
Step 4: Confirm the deletion in the pop-up by selecting “Delete from My iPhone”
A side note:
• The removed contacts will remain on your iCloud. Once your turn on the Contacts sync, these contacts will appear in your device again.
• If you want to keep some contacts on your iPhone while removing the rest, this all-or-nothing solution is obviously not appropriate.
In most of the cases, people delete contacts from iCloud because of storage shortage---even iCloud has a storage limit. Besides iCloud storage shortage, there’s another drawback of managing contacts with iCloud, which gets more poignant when you accidentally delete important contacts and recover from an earlier version only to find out that the existing contacts on your devices are completely gone.
To prevent from storage shortage issues and any risk of data loss, we suggest you to back up your contacts from iOS devices to external devices with AOMEI FoneBackup. In this way, you can save not only iCloud storage space for other information but also contacts you probably need in the future.
AOMEI FoneBackup is a handy and efficient PC based third party iPhone management and data transfer tool, highly credited for its security and easy-to-use interface.
Compared with iCloud backup, AOMEI FoneBackup is a more practical and user-friendly backup software, with which you can selectively back up contacts you need from iPhone to PC without the risk of data loss/replacing.
Step 1: Launch AOMEI FoneBackup > connect iPhone to PC with a USB cable.
Step 2: Click Phone Backup > Selective Backup.
Step 3. Choose Contacts > Click the contact icon to choose the specific items > click OK to continue.
Step 4: Choose a storage path> choose a file format> click Transfer.
Tip: AOMEI FoneBackup also enables you to export iPhone contacts to VCard/SCV with the “Transfer to iPhone” feature.
This article shows you how to delete contacts from iCloud, whether in batches or in all. It also shows you how to delete contacts from iPhone. Apart from giving tips on deleting contacts, this article also offers another solution for users to better manage their contacts by backupping contacts to external devices with AOMEI FoneBackup. If you find this article helpful, don’t hesitate to share it with others.
