Manually cleaning duplicate contacts on your iPhone can be frustrating. Thankfully, with iOS 16, Apple released a native feature to find and merge or delete duplicate contacts from your iPhone's contacts list.

Even if your iPhone isn't running on iOS 16, there's a workaround to do it without manually finding and deleting or merging contacts, which can take much longer.

Here, we'll discuss how you can unclutter your iPhone's contacts list by easily deleting or merging duplicate contacts.

How to Find and Merge Duplicate Contacts on Your iPhone

The Contacts app on your iPhone checks your address book and flags any contact cards with the same phone number, first name, and last name as duplicates, allowing you to merge them.

Here's how you can find and merge those duplicate contacts on your iPhone:

  1. Launch the Contacts app on your iPhone, and a pop-up should appear under your card at the top that you have duplicate contacts.
  2. Tap View Duplicates. A list of all duplicate contacts should appear.
  3. Press the Merge All button at the bottom.
  4. Tap Merge Duplicates to confirm your action.

That's it. The duplicate contacts will be automatically deleted from your iPhone. If you're looking for a way to do something similar on your Android phone rather than your iPhone, you can merge Duplicate contacts on your Android phone as well.

How to Merge Contacts With Different Names on Your iPhone

After using the method mentioned above, you may discover that you still have a few contact cards for the same person but with different names. That's because you can only merge contact cards with the same name using the above approach.

So, here's how you can merge contacts with different names:

  1. Open the Contacts app on your iPhone and select the contact you want to merge.
  2. Tap the Edit button in the top-right corner.
  3. Scroll down and tap on link contacts.
  4. Find and select the contact card you want to link to.
  5. Now, tap Link in the top-right corner.
  6. Hit Done to save your changes.

Note that doing this won't merge or delete the other contact. It keeps both contacts. It will just show them as one entry in your contacts list. The contact card will be titled the same as the first contact you selected.

If you want to change it, select the contact, go to Linked Contacts, tap the other name, and select Use This Name For Unified Card. Moreover, if you want to manage your contacts efficiently, consider using the lists option to organize your contacts on an iPhone.

How to Delete Duplicate Contacts on Your iPhone

As long as you know the duplicate contact cards saved on your iPhone, it should be easy for you to delete them. The process of deleting duplicate contacts on your iPhone is pretty straightforward. In fact, it's the same as deleting a normal contact card.

But what if you want to delete multiple duplicate contact cards at once? Or you aren't using iOS 16 on your iPhone and want to delete duplicate contacts? Easy Cleaner is an excellent solution if you don't mind installing a third-party app on your iPhone to access your contacts list.

Download: Easy Cleaner (Free)

Here's how you can use it to get rid of duplicate contacts on your iPhone with Easy Cleaner:

  1. Launch the Easy Cleaner app and head to the Contacts section from the bottom.
  2. Select Duplicate Contacts from the list.
  3. Select the contact you want to delete.
  4. Tap the ellipsis (...) button in the top-right corner.
  5. Choose the red Delete Contacts button.

Besides deleting, you can also merge duplicate contacts on your iPhone using the Easy Cleaner app. All you need to do is tap Merge All Duplicates from the bottom once you've selected a duplicate contact.

Get Rid of Duplicate Contacts From Your iPhone

Finding and merging or deleting duplicate contacts manually can be quite a chore, which is why most of us would probably avoid it. Thankfully, smartphones have become a lot better at assisting us with this chore.

Whether you want to find and merge a duplicate contact or get rid of it by deleting it, this guide will be helpful.