How to Merge Duplicate Contacts on iPhone and Android

Contacts often live in several places at once: the phone itself, an email account, a cloud account and a SIM card. When these sync, the same person can appear two or three times, each with slightly different details. Over the years you also collect entries with a number but no name, or a name but no way to reach them.

Recent versions of iOS can detect duplicates in the Contacts app and offer to merge them. On Android, the Google Contacts app has a suggestions area that offers to merge and fix duplicates. These are the quickest options when your contacts are all in one account.

Our contacts cleaner works from an export file. Export your contacts from your phone as a VCF or CSV file, open it in the cleaner, and it groups people who share a phone number or email address. Entries that only share a name are flagged for you to check rather than merged automatically, because two different people can have the same name.

When you are ready, download a cleaned file in the format you started with. The file is read inside your browser and is not uploaded, and we do not store any contact details.

Keep your original export as a backup. Before importing the cleaned version, consider removing the old contacts from the account so the merged entries do not create fresh duplicates. If you are unsure, import into a new account first and compare.

Add a name to any entry that only has a number, and delete cards that have neither a number nor an email. A smaller, accurate address book is quicker to search and far easier to trust.