New Delhi: Apple recently introduced the iOS 16.2 stable updates for all compatible phones. There’s a possibility that you will accumulate a collection of doubles in your address book. These duplicate contacts don’t take up much storage space, but it can still be annoying to have to scroll through multiple. But don’t stress, we have a handy hack to streamline your contacts once and for all and you can finally find the information you actually want without sifting through doubles, triples, or more copies of the same contact.
- Make sure that iCloud contacts are syncing with your Mac. Do this by clicking the Apple logo in the top-left corner of the screen, clicking System Preferences, and making sure that Contacts is checked under Apps on this Mac using iCloud. You can exit out of settings after this.
- Go into the Contacts app on your Mac. (If you can’t find it, use Command + Space bar for spotlight search or go into the top-right corner and toggle the magnifying glass icon to search for it.)
- In the Contacts app, you’ll see all the names, numbers and addresses that you’ve collected and synced across devices over the years. To gather up all of your duplicated contacts at once, go to the top of the screen, click Card and select Look for Duplicates.
- After a moment or two, Apple will tell you how many copies you have, and give you the option to overlap them in a merge. This pop-up also includes a checkmark box that asks if you want to merge contacts that have the same name but different information listed under them — such as one having an email address versus the other having a phone number. If you want to do this as well, check the box before hitting the blue Merge button on the right. The app will take it from there.
- It’s important to note that if you have two different contacts that have the same name and follow these steps, both numbers will be added to the remaining contact. To avoid mixing up separate people, go into each person’s card and use something in their names to distinguish them.
