This is how to ‘spring clean’ your iPhone: Hack lets you delete multiple contacts at once

Deleting your contacts one by one can be tedious, but a hack shows an easy way to clean your iPhone from unwanted numbers.

There are tricks to delete all your contacts at once, just a few or a whole group, with the tap of a finger or two.

It combines iOS 16’s drag-select feature with the comprehensive press feature that lets you quickly delete contacts.

Below are the hacks to rid your life of unwanted contacts:

Quickly delete multiple iPhone contacts

This quick hack only requires two fingers, or maybe one finger and one thumb. Here’s how to delete multiple contacts at once or even multiple groups of contacts on your iPhone:

1. Open the green phone icon on your home screen.
2. Go to the Contacts section of the call menu.
3. Tap with two fingers to hold the first contact you want to delete.
4. While holding one of those fingers still, drag the other finger up or down to select the range of contacts you want to delete.
5. You can now lift both figures and scroll slightly up and down through the contact list. Each additional contact that you touch with two fingers at the same time will be added to the total selection.
6. Lift your fingers from the screen, then press and hold one of the selected contacts with one finger. You should see a menu with four options for all selected contacts: Copy, Share, Merge [selected number] Delete cards or Contacts.
7. Press the ‘Delete contacts’ button.
8. When asked, “Are you sure you want to [number] selected contacts?’, press the red ‘Delete contacts’ button.

Delete all contacts on an iPhone

Obviously, you can drag and select all of your contacts using the above two-finger approach to delete them. It can even be cathartic.

But if you’re looking for something faster, another quick way to bulk delete your contacts is to select a list of contacts associated with an account in your settings.

This trick is useful if you’ve just changed jobs:

1. Go to Settings, the gear icon and click on Contacts in the menu.
2. Click Accounts in the Contacts menu.
3. Choose the account you want to delete contacts from. Among the accounts listed are those associated directly with your phone and those associated with email suites that you have associated with your phone in the past: Outlook, Gmail, iCloud accounts, old work or personal e-mails. emails, etc.
4. After selecting an account, enable the “Contacts” setting.
5. Press ‘Delete from my iPhone’ to confirm.

Delete contacts on iPhone one by one

You can also delete your contacts in a more targeted way via the editing function.

This is a great way to prune or update numbers for a contact that has also changed.

Here’s what to do:

1. Open the green phone icon on your home screen.
2. Go to the Contacts section of the call menu.
3. Click on the contact you want to delete or edit.
4. Tap the “Edit” button.
5. Press ‘Delete contact’ in red and press again to confirm that you are sure you want to delete the contact.