What to do if iPhone is not saving contacts

With all the miraculous possibilities smartphones offer these days, we still rely on some essential, decades-old features to work. Imagine being able to stream content or group FaceTime and not being able to save contacts on your iPhone. Well, that’s exactly what happened to some users. Based on reports on the official forum, iPhone is not saving contacts after a system update.

We made sure to provide you with some solutions for this problem so make sure to check them out below. Hopefully, they help you address the contacts issue in no time.

Table of contents:

1. Restart your iPhone
2. Toggle All Groups
3. Check iCloud Settings
4. Toggle off Short Name and select Default Account
5. Update your firmware or reset all settings

Why are my Contacts not saving on my iPhone?

1. Restart your iPhone

The first thing you should do on your iPhone is reboot it. A simple restart goes a long way and some users even claim that it completely addressed the problem. At least the ones that started experiencing issues after an update.

So, restart your iPhone and check for improvements. If that doesn’t help, make sure to try the next step.

2. Toggle All Groups

There’s a slight chance that the contact you have created ended up in a different contacts group. As you know, you can add multiple accounts with saved contacts (iCloud is the default one) like Gmail or Outlook. So, what you need to do is toggle all groups in Contacts in order to show all contacts that are stored on your device.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open the Phone app.
2. Tap on Contacts at the bottom.
3. Tap Groups at the top left corner.
4. Make sure that all Groups are checked.
5. Get back to Messages and see if the missing contacts appeared.

If you are interested in editing (adding or removing) Contacts Accounts, you can do that in Settings > Contacts.

3. Check iCloud Settings

If the contact that disappeared is created on iCloud (again, the default service on iOS), you’ll need to toggle the Contacts option in iCloud settings on your device. That way, Contacts will sync to iCloud to your device and vice versa.

Here’s how to toggle Contacts in iCloud settings:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap on your profile at the top.
3. Select iCloud.
4. Toggle On Contacts.

On the other hand, if you have other accounts, like Gmail, and you want to import contacts to your device, follow these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Contacts.
3. Select Accounts.
4. Tap Gmail.
5. Toggle On Contacts.

This procedure applies to other third-party services. In case the problem continues to bother you and your iPhone is not saving contacts, check the next step.

4. Toggle off Short Name and select Default Account

Some users suggest disabling the Short Name option. For some reason, when this option is disabled, contacts appear and users can successfully save them. We don’t see any correlation to the problem, but if it works for some, it might work for you, too.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Contacts.
3. Tap Short Name.
4. Disable the option and check for improvements.

In addition, you can also try and switch the default contacts account. If you use another account to store your contacts (e.g. Gmail), you can set it as the default one so all new contacts will be saved to it.

Follow these steps to choose the default account for Contacts on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Select Contacts.
3. Tap Default Account.
4. Choose Gmail or any other service you use to store and sync contacts.

5. Update your firmware or reset all settings

If the previous steps didn’t work, we recommend resetting all settings on your iPhone. Based on reports, this problem occurred after an update, so that seems like a system bug. Updating your device beforehand is a good idea since there might be a swift fix in the recent firmware release.

So, firstly, let’s check for system updates. Here’s how to manually update firmware on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Select Software Update.
4. Check for updates and install if any are available. In case you don’t have enough storage space, make sure to create some.

If your iPhone is still not saving contacts or there are no updates available, you can try fixing the problem by resetting all settings. This procedure won’t delete any data, so don’t worry about that. Although, you’ll probably need some time to configure settings back to your liking.

Here’s how to Reset All Settings on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Select Transfer or Reset iPhone.
4. Tap Reset.
5. Select Reset All Settings.
6. Confirm when prompted.

That should do it. If the error still plagues you, make sure to send a report to Apple Support. Thank you for reading and feel free to share your thoughts, questions, or suggestions with us and other readers. You can do so in the comments section below.