Contacts Disappeared from Your iPhone? Here’s How to Bring Them Back

BY Ali Hassan Mahdi

Published 16 Apr 2017

contacts ios

Every once in a while, you may come across a strange bug on your iPhone that will leave you frustrated. One such issue is that the contacts on your iPhone will suddenly disappear without any apparent reason.

Many iPhone users have reported this issue and I’ve also had this problem before. Luckily, it is very easy to bring back the missing contacts on your iPhone and in this tutorial, we’ll show you how it can be done.

How to Bring Back the Missing iPhone Contacts

Method 1: Sign out of iCloud and Sign in back

Step 1: Go to Settings > iCloud.

Step 2: Scroll to the bottom and tap on Sign Out.

Step 3: Now sign back into your iCloud account.

Step 4: Ensure that the toggle for Contacts is turned on.

Method 2: Disable Contacts in iCloud and Turn on again

Step 1: Go to Settings > iCloud.

Step 2: Turn off the toggle for Contacts. If you get a prompt for removing the previously synced contacts, choose Delete from My iPhone (this will remove the contacts just from your iPhone and not from iCloud).

Step 3: Now force reboot your iPhone:

  • Press the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons together until your device restarts and you see the Apple logo. On iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, you have to press the Volume Down and Home button.

Step 4: Go back to Settings > iCloud and toggle on Contacts.

Method 3: Change Groups Settings

Step 1: Open the Phone app.

Step 2: Go to the Contacts tab.

Step 3: Tap on Groups in the top left corner.

Step 4: Deselect the All iCloud option.

Step 5: Now tap on All [iPhone name] to select it.

Step 6: Tap on Done in the top right corner to save the settings.

In the contacts list, you will now see a list of all the contacts saved on your iPhone. Find the ones that are missing and add them to your contacts. This will sync it with iCloud.

Method 4: Restore your iPhone from iTunes Backup

If you took a backup of your iPhone in iTunes before this problem appeared, then you can restore from that backup to get back the missing contacts.

Step 1: Connect your iPhone to your computer and open iTunes.

Step 2: Click on the device icon to open the Summary page.

Step 3: Click on Restore Backup.

Step 4: Choose the most recent backup of your iPhone and then click on Restore.

These are the four solutions to getting back the contacts that are missing on your iPhone. It can be frustrating when your important contacts disappear all of a sudden, so we recommend that you regularly take a backup of your iPhone in iTunes to avoid losing your important data.

Have you used another method of restoring your missing contacts? Let us know in the comments below.