How to Delete Contacts from iCloud [Comprehensive Guide]

When phone numbers, email addresses, and contact details on your iPhone start to pile up, you will probably receive a notification warning you that your iPhone storage is full. Undoubtedly, you can backup contacts to iCloud to restore some storage space to your iPhone, but there’s also a limit to storage in iCloud, which makes it necessary to have a “house clean” from time to time.

However, many Apple users find it difficult to delete contacts from iCloud and iPhone as well, since Apple doesn’t allow batch-delete on iPhone itself. The following sections cover a comprehensive tutorial that will walk you through how to delete all/multiple contacts from the iCloud site and from your iPhone.

How to Delete All/Multiple Contacts from iCloud

Once you’ve synced your iPhone/iPad with iCloud, any alterations you make with iCloud will be synced to your devices. So when you delete a contact from iCloud while the sync is on, it will be deleted from all of your Apple devices accordingly. The following steps will show you how to delete contacts from iCloud whether in batches or in all at one time.

Way 1. Easiest Way to Delete Contacts from iCloud - FoneTool

One of the easiest ways to delete contacts from iCloud is to use FoneTool. With this tool, you can upload, download, and delete contacts from iCloud with ease. Whether you’re transitioning to a new Apple ID or not, FoneTool makes it easy to manage your iCloud files.

Download FoneTool to your Windows PC today and start your journey to efficient iCloud data management.

Step 1: Launch FoneTool and navigate to My iCloud. Sign in with your Apple ID and click Manage iCloud.

Step 2: Click the Contacts icon to preview and select the contacts that you wish to delete or tap Select All > Next, click the Delete button to confirm.

Way 2. Delete Multiple Contacts from iCloud.com

Step 1: Sign in to iCloud.com and go to Contacts from the main menu.

Step 2: Press the Ctrl button on your keyboard to select the contacts you want to delete from the contact list on the right side.

Step 3: After selecting, press the Delete button on your keyboard and confirm the deletion.

Way 3. Delete All Contacts from iCloud

Step 1: Sign in to iCloud.com and go to Contacts from the main menu.

Step 2: Click the "gear" Settings button in the lower-left corner.

Step 3: Choose Select All in the actions menu to select all the contacts on the page.

Step 4: Click the gear button again and select Delete.

Step 5: Confirm the deletion in the pop-up to delete all your contacts.

Notes:✍⋆⋆⋆⋆

You can sign in to iCloud.com on iPad, Mac, or Windows PC to delete contacts from iCloud. Unfortunately, you can’t sign in to iCloud.com on iPhone to manage/delete your contacts. 

If you just want to clean up your iCloud storage and delete contacts from iCloud instead of from your Apple devices, make sure your Contacts iCloud sync is turned off and follow the same operations mentioned above to delete contacts from iCloud while keeping them on your devices. 

How to Delete Contacts on iPhone

Technically speaking, it’s impossible to sign in to iCloud.com on iPhone to manage your Contacts, which is only available on a computer/iPad. However, when you don’t want to sign in to iCloud to delete contacts but just want contacts on your iPhone deleted, there’s an alternative that enables you to delete contacts from your iPhone, even though there are certain restrictions. 

This tutorial presumes you are syncing iPhone Contacts with iCloud. If your Contacts app is not synced with iCloud, it’s impossible to delete all contacts from your iPhone at one time. The subsequent section gives a tutorial on how to delete contacts from iPhones:

Step 1: Open the Settings on your iPhone and tap your Apple ID.

Step 2: Go to iCloud on the Apple ID page.

Step 3: Toggle Contacts switch off under “Apps Using iCloud”.

Step 4: Confirm the deletion in the pop-up by selecting “Delete from My iPhone”.

If you want to keep the synced contacts on iCloud but delete all of them from your iPhone, you can try this tutorial.

Notes:✍⋆⋆⋆⋆

The removed contacts will remain on your iCloud. Once your turn on the Contacts sync, these contacts will appear on your device again.

 If you want to keep some contacts on your iPhone while removing the rest, this all-or-nothing solution is obviously not appropriate.

The Best Solution to Save You from Bulky Contacts

In most cases, people delete contacts from iCloud because of storage shortage---even iCloud has a storage limit. Besides iCloud storage shortage, there’s another drawback of managing contacts with iCloud, which gets more striking when you accidentally delete important contacts and recover from an earlier version only to find out that the existing contacts on your devices are completely gone.

To prevent storage shortage issues and any risk of data loss, we suggest you back up your contacts from iOS devices to external devices with FoneTool. In this way, you can save not only iCloud storage space for other information but also contacts you probably need in the future.

FoneTool is a handy and efficient PC-based third-party iPhone management and data transfer tool, highly credited for its security and easy-to-use interface. Compared with iCloud backup, FoneTool is a more practical and user-friendly backup software, with which you can selectively back up contacts you need from iPhone to PC without the risk of data loss/replacement. 

How to backup/transfer contacts to PC? Follow the simple steps:

Step 1: Launch FoneTool > Connect iPhone to PC with a USB cable.

Step 2: Click Selective Backup under More Features> Select Contacts.

Step 3: Click the contacts icon to choose the specific items > click OK to continue.

Step 4: Choose a storage path> choose a file format> click Start Transfer.

Conclusion

This article shows you how to delete contacts from iCloud, whether in batches or in all. It also shows you how to delete contacts from your iPhone. Apart from giving tips on deleting contacts, this article also offers another solution for users to better manage their contacts by back-upping contacts to external devices with FoneTool. If you find this article helpful, don’t hesitate to share it with others.