I’ve been an Android fan and user since the days of the HTC Hero (which ended up in the hands of the Taliban after being lost in a Melbourne cab – but that’s another story), but one thing that has caused plenty of frustration over the years is how the contacts address book gets bloated.
In a device who’s prime function is communication, having an address book that is 10x bigger than it should be causes massive performance problems – from creating a new SMS/email message through to making a call from the dialer, having too many contacts becomes a daily pain in the butt.
My main address book in Google Apps is already pretty large, with a bit over 3000 contacts in it. To help with using Voice, and now Hangouts as a browser extension, I’ve also set up a sync where contacts created in my Apps account are synced (via Xapier) across to my personal Gmail account.
Having gotten the new Nexus 6 last week, I set up my accounts and mistakenly left the “sync” option on for Gmail – the result was a doubling up of contacts. Android is pretty clever at merging the view of them, but it doesn’t stop there being multiple contacts in the actual database on the phone.
Now at close to 7000 contacts, things are getting a bit bloated/heavy, but wait, it gets worse.
Install the LinkedIn app? Great, now you get a contact for each of your connections (another 4000 there). Facebook seems to do the same (1200 or so there), and then add Skype and you’ll get another contact for each of your Skype connections. I don’t use Whatsapp anymore because it destroyed my contacts list, creating what seemed like a new Whatsapp contact for every other apps contact and grinding my address book and compose processes to a halt.
All of this, combined with some of those apps seeming to multiple contacts, left me with a contact list of over 38,000 contacts – 10x more than I actually need (or want).
The first step was to do what I should have raced to do when setting up my phone (and what Google should make an option with checkboxes at the time of connection) – disabling my @gmail.com account sync.
Unfortunately, though, while disconnected, it didn’t actually remove the contacts from my phone (I can see why they’d make that choice – deleting is pretty final), and with all the other shit listed above, I really wanted to wipe the contact database clean and start again.
One (nuclear) option is to do a factory reset of your phone and start again (being quicker at the unsync) and choosing not to do address book synchronization for apps like LinkedIn and Skype in the first place. I didn’t really fancy having to go through the effort of setting up Google Authenticator codes, or having to re-setup everything from icons to apps, so this wasn’t appealing.
The better option is to use a great little free app called “Delete Contacts“. This app does what it’s name suggests – it deletes all of the contacts on your phone, either group by group or en-masse.
Since most of the apps that create extra contacts are just for consuming contacts (LinkedIn) or using a special purpose app to contact them (Skype), you don’t care too much about consequences of doing a delete on these, but your Google address book is more two-way.
I don’t know if using Delete Contacts would delete things from Google’s address book in the cloud, but didn’t want to take a chance. The steps to “unsync” changes from your phone back up to Google are:
- Open the “Contacts” app (this is in Lollypop – earlier versions have different paths, like going via “Settings”).
- Click on the menu option in the top right.
- Choose “Accounts”.
- Choose “Google”.
- Choose the account you want to unsync
- Untick the checkbox next to “Contacts”
- Repeat steps 5 and 6 for each Google account.
Once this is done, fire up Delete Contacts app. The first two options are “read only”, but choose the option half way down the screen called “Delete Contacts”. It will then delete all of your contacts.
You’ll probably need to wait a while (mine took most of the time this blog post took to write), and then go back into the section above where you unticked the Sync process and turn on just the account(s) you want to sync.
I was hoping that this would be enough, however, the method of deleting contacts we’ve followed here is a bit brutal. Basically, Android appears to store a “last modification” timestamp, and when the sync process runs it only fetches new contacts via Google’s API that were modified after that timestamp.
The solution, though, is pretty easy – you just need to modify all of your contacts, which is easier than it sounds.
- Go into Google Contacts.
- Create a new Group (link is in the left hand nav at the time of writing, below all the other groups)
- Call it something like “Test”.
- Then tick the checkbox in the top to select all the contacts on the page (100 at a time).
- Click on the “Groups” icon, and then select the “Test” group you created in Step 3.
Do this for each page of contacts (unfortunately there’s no “select all from all pages” option with Google Contacts). Once you’re done, you can delete the “Test” group you created in Step 3 above.
The reason you’re doing this is because by adding the contacts to this test group, you’ll have updated their “modified” timestamp, which means your phone will then download them as part of it’s normal sync. Within a few minutes (over wifi) you should see a crisp, clean new address book and faster responsiveness when you try and make a call or send a text message. Enjoy!
geoffmcqueen.com 
Hi. Thanks for help.
I was frustrated with this contact sync mess.
Your information helped me cleaning up that stuff. \m/
I found a simpler way.
Make sure you’ve gone into Settings > Accounts > Google and disabled sync on the accounts you don’t want synced.
Then go to Settings > Apps > look for contacts and contact storage and clear data and force stop both of them.
Finally open contacts and see what happens.
For me on my LG G4, contacts resynced and I only contacts on the account I wanted contacts for.
Is this going to erase all of my regular phone contacts, in addition to the contact lists that I unsynced?
It will; in my case (and I think the common one) anyone you put on your phone will also be sync’ed with Google’s servers (and visible in contacts.google.com in your browser to be sure) but I can imagine it is possible to choose phone only.
Did it on my Samsung Galaxy S10+ and this actually worked great.
Thanks dude.
It worked like a charm in July 2020. Thanks and Live long and prosper.
Thanks Geoff and Nicholas!
Thank you Nicholas! Worked perfectly on my LG G Flex 2. 🙂
Thanks a lot Geoff & Nicholas!.
This is wonderful! No offense Geoff, but Nicholas’ method is much easier! You might even consider rewriting it with his permission. I used it to clear out my contacts and calendar after adding another Google account and forgetting to turn off sync right away. I agree, a checkbox at the time of adding a new account would be such a great idea! Anyway, I just turned off that account’s sync and left my normal one on. Then after I hit [CLEAR DATA] from Apps > All > Contact Storage and Calendar Storage, I just waited and eventually everything was back to normal. Easy as pie! Thanks to both of you though! You have helped us out a lot!
So can you unsync a Google account if you don’t have the pass word to the account already sync in the phone
This is some much needed info! I thought I was the only one going crazy with this stuff
Thanks!
Google really should make a better contact management system. With smartphones we can do wonders these days, but we have forgotten what phones are for it seems, and some basic stuff which should be flawless by now is actually a bigger mess than the pre smartphone era!
Thanks guys!
Nicholas’ approach worked perfectly! A couple tips based on my experience (Moto G5 plus):
-Had to change Apps settings to “Show System” to get contacts storage to show up.
-After clearing contact data, they did not automatically sync on opening the Contacts app. I had to turn sync off and then on again for that account before they would download.
I’m so glad I don’t have to sift through my work contacts anymore!
any app download link
Hi, I was hesitant to use this method as it involved deleting contacts. Wanted to share this alternate method which worked for me:
1. Go to Settings>Accounts>[select account you don’t wanted synced], and make sure Contacts sync is turned off. Repeat for as many accounts as needed.
2. Next, go to Settings>Apps, tap Menu (the three dots) and select Show System>select app called Contacts storage (not the app called Contacts)>Storage>Clear Data.
3. Now open the Contacts app again, and wait a few seconds/minutes for it to resync contacts
This method does not involve any actual deleting of contacts, online or off, and is not affected my the modified timestamp, it simply clears the list on the phone and forces it to repopulate. Hope the share helps!
Aaaand… I just noticed someone already shared this method in a comment. Just to clarify, I only cleared the data on the Contacts storage app, not the Contacts app, still worked fine. I did force stop the app as well, but I don’t think that’s actually necessary. If it doesn’t automatically start re-syncing, you can simply go back to Settings>Accounts>[the account you want contacts synced from], make sure contacts ARE set to sync, and rather than turning sync off and on again (which should also work fine, but once in a while is buggy and doesn’t sync everything), click the three dots in the top right corner to open the menu, and Sync now.
I think I really appreciate finding this page as I think I need such help but I want to clarify before I do anything.
I have 3 gmail accounts A, B and C that have been successfully on my Pixel 3 since the beginning. And since the beginning, since setting up these accounts on this Pixel it is only for A that I had selected the syncing of CONTACTS as it is only those 180 that I use regularly; that are important. Accidentally last week I inadvertently turned on, within the Pixel, syncing of contacts for account B and now there is a merge, on my phone of the contacts for both A and B…which I so don’t want :(. And it is this new “mega” contact list that comes up when one chooses CONTACTS in the phone app :(. Rachel (Nicholas,Travis and V) is what you (and these others) are describing is removing *all* CONTACTS on my phone i.e. for all 3 google accounts and then repopulating once I reboot and have the proper sync on?
(For my Pixel phone I have Clear STORAGE (not clear DATA as you had written); but maybe that is because this is an Android 10 system)
Thank you!!! I was desperate to get the many work and volunteer-activity contacts off my phone after syncing those accounts. I tried all the suggestions on this page that apply to my LG Stylo 3 Plus interface. It worked! But only after rebooting my phone. Now my list of phone contacts is clean and tidy. Many thanks for restoring my sanity!
Another Solution that has Worked with me 😎
All these Steps are in Google Contacts
I did these steps on my Samsung (Android) phone and it worked 😍😍😍😍😍
For the iphone users read it. It is very similar so don’t worry you can do it💪🏻.
Just to give you a brief on what are we going to do. We will delete all the synced contacts from your gmail account inside your phone >>Then sign out of that account >>Then if you want to recover your contacts it will be through the Web browser >>Undo Changes.
First, DO NOT LOGOUT from the gmail account that has synced its Contacts to your phone yet. If you did then login again.Second, download Google Contacts Application. Once you open it you will see all the gmail accounts that has synced their contacts in your phone.On the top right, select the Gmail account that has synced its contacts in you phone. Make sure that you enable Sync in your phone and you do this account by Clicking
Google Contacts app >> Click on the Three dashes = on the top left
>>Setting >>Accounts >>Then click on your account and double check its if the sync ia enable for the contacts(it has to be enabled in order for this to work)
If no >> then enable the contacts sync
If yes >> all you have to do now is click on your account (in the Google Contact Apps) >>Select all the contacts and DELETE THEM ALL >>Then Sign out of this gmail account from your phone
After Deleting : Congratulations 👏🏻🎉🎈check your phone original contacts app you will see that all your contacts are gone.😍😍😍
Now How to get you Deleted contacts back 😉
All you have to do is go to Google Contacts Website
Sign in – Google Accounts
>>Click on the Setting icon
>>Click on undo changes >>choose one hour. Since deleting your contacts didn’t take longer than hour.
🎈Conclusion :
If you really need the gmail account to be in your phone but you dont want its contacts to be synced you have to delete all the contacts from that account.
or if you want, you will have to export all the contacts from Google Contacts Website or App (take a copy of it) then delete them(in the cloud). Then Sign in that Gmail Account.
Hope this will Solve Everyone Problem😉
Good Luck to you All❤
Many thanks for this. In my case the accidentially synced contacts to the phone where ‘onsynced’ to another google account. Luckily we could address this with the same undo function mentioned above.