Over time, your iPhone’s contact list can get rather extensive. Before you know it, you’re scrolling through a multitude of people you never call or text. The list gets even longer when you add other accounts to the device, likeGmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.

Difficulty

What You Need

Apple iPhone

We show you how to delete contacts on an iPhone. Removing a single contact is easy, but ridding yourself of multiple contacts requires a trip online.

Delete a single contact

If you need to delete one or two contacts, this is the best way. Using this method means you may’t delete more than one contact at a time, so it’s great for the safety of your important contacts.

Step 1:Open the Contacts app.

Step 2:Select the contact you want to delete.

Step 3:ChooseEditat the top right corner of the screen.

Step 4:Go down and tapDelete Contact.

Step 5:Tap theDelete Contactpop-up to confirm.

Delete multiple contacts simultaneously

Because the Contacts app doesn’t let you delete multiple contacts at once, you’ll need to open a desktop browser (not mobile) and use the iCloud website to delete more than one contact at a time. This is the only way Apple provides to delete multiple contacts at once.

Step 1:Go to iCloud.com in a desktop web browser like Safari, log in using your Apple ID, and Click to open theContactsweb app.

Step 2:Press and hold theCtrlkey on your keyboard and click on all the contacts you want to delete. They should all appear in the panel to the right.

Step 3:Click on theGear iconin the bottom left corner and selectDeleteon the pop-up menu.

Step 4:SelectDeleteagain in the pop-up window to confirm.

Remove a specific account’s contact list

One of the drawbacks of adding multiple accounts to your iPhone, like Gmail and Yahoo, is that their contact lists merge together in the Contacts app. The result is one long list that may have multiple entries of the same contact. To reduce this list and purge duplicates, you can disable contact synchronization for each account.

Step 1:In theSettingsapp, scroll down and tapContacts.

Step 2:TapAccountson the following screen.

Step 3:Select anAccount.

Step 4:Tap the toggle next toContactsto remove that account’s list of contacts from your iPhone.

Step 5:Toggle the Controloffand thenconfirm.

Note: To remove contacts in Apple’s cloud, tapiCloudfollowed byiCloudagain to access theContactstoggle.