Creating contacts for everything on your iPhone can initially seem like a good idea, but if you have a lot of contact information on your iPhone, it can make it tough to find a specific contact.
If you are trying to clean up a messy contacts list on your iPhone, then you may be getting tired of manually deleting each contact that you don’t need.
In fact, you might have even decided to figure out how to delete all contacts on iPhone 13 so that you can start over fresh.
How to Mass Delete iPhone Contacts
- Open Settings.
- Choose Contacts.
- Select Accounts.
- Tap an account.
- Turn off the Contacts option.
- Tap Delete from My iPhone to confirm.
- Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 for each of your accounts.
Our guide continues below with additional information on how to delete all contacts on iPhone 13, including pictures of these steps.
Are you using AutoFill to remember your usernames and passwords? Our how do I save passwords on iPhone 13 article will show you how.
There are a number of different ways to manage the information on an iPhone, but many of those features are focused on backing up or making sure that the information is saved.
So when you want to do something like getting rid of all of your iPhone contacts, you are going to find that it’s not as easy as you might expect.
If you’ve already explored this process of trying to delete multiple iPhone contacts, then you probably found that there is no way to select contacts, or at least, select multiple contacts.
But while we might only be able ot delete individual contacts, there is a way to mass delete contacts by simply removing multiple contacts on iPhone that were placed there by one of the email accounts that you configured.
Most of the contacts on your iPhone are actually going to be from your email accounts, or from your iCloud account.
So, to get rid of your contacts, you are doing to need to remove the association between the contacts in those accounts and your device.
Our guide below is going to show you how to do this on your iPhone 13 which will remove all of the contacts from the device.
Find out how to sort contacts by first name on iPhone 13 if you have been having trouble finding people by their last name.
How to Get Rid of All the Contacts on an iPhone (Guide with Pictures)
The steps in this article were performed on an iPhone 13 in the iOS 15.5 operating system.
Step 1: Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Step 2: Scroll down and select the Contacts option.
Step 3: Touch the Accounts button.
Take note of the Default Account option listed here, as that is the account where new contacts are being stored on the device, and is probably where most of your contacts are located.
Step 4: Choose one of the accounts listed here.
If most of the contacts that you have on your phone were added after you got the phone, then it’s likely that they are saved as iCloud contacts, so you might want to select that first to start deleting contacts from all your Apple devices.
Step 5: Tap the button to the right of Contacts to remove them from the device.
Step 6: Touch the Delete from My iPhone button to confirm the removal of the email account contacts.
Step 7: Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 for any other accounts for which you would like to quickly delete multiple contacts.
Now that you know how to delete all contacts on iPhone 13, you will be able to start fresh with an empty contacts list so that you only have contacts whom you are actually interacting with.
Related: You can use a similar technique if you are trying to figure out how to sign out of mail on iPhone as well.
Note that when you remove multiple contacts or all your contacts from a device it will affect things in your call history or the Messages app. Instead of showing contact names next to conversations or calls, it is now just going to show a phone number.
You can always come back here and turn this on again if you decide that you want to have these contacts on your device.
Now that you know how to delete all contacts on iPhone you will be able to better manage your contacts in the future.
Our block a number on iPhone article will show you some steps to take so that you aren’t being constantly interrupted by spam calls.
More Information About How to Delete iPhone Contacts
If you want to delete multiple contacts but you don’t want to get rid of all of them, then you won’t be able to do it in the Contacts app or by going to Phone > Contacts. You will need to use your Apple ID to sign into iCloud.com, select the Contacts option there, then use those tools to manage your contacts instead.
You can delete contacts individually as well. Simply go to Phone > Contacts > then select a contact, tap Edit at the top-right corner of the screen, then scroll down and tap delete Contact. You will then need to touch the Delete button again to confirm.
Note that instead of using the Phone app, you can also use the Contacts app. For most people, this is found on the second Home screen, in a folder labeled “extras,” You could also swipe down on the Home screen to open the search tool and search for “contacts” as well.
Whichever method you use to delete contacts on iPhone, whether you need to get rid of multiple iPhone contacts or just delete iPhone contacts individually, knowing that you are able to manage this information and keep it a little more organized can really help to improve your iPhone experience.
Matthew Burleigh has been writing technology how-to articles and tutorials for over a decade. He has extensive experience in information technology both in small business and as a consultant.
His articles have appeared on dozens of websites and been read millions of times.
He covers many different topics concerning technology, but focuses primarily on smartphones, consumer software, and consumer electronics.
You can read his full bio here.