I had the unenviable task of cleaning up and reorganizing my contacts in the Contacts app. What a terrible app! I will not go into the gory details. Suffice it to say that what should have been a simple drag and drop required exporting, importing, and drag and drop.
Does anyone know of a good contacts app for Mac and iOS that is native, syncs flawlessly and quickly, supports groups and smart lists, and works with Apple Mail for adding contact information from a message? I prefer a one-time purchase.
I agree, Apple Contacts for MacOS is … 2015 or so. But not 2026!
I recommend BusyContacts (for MacOS). Sadly there is not BusyContacts for iOS. But I am fine with Apple Contacts on my iOS device because I organise and edit the contacts with BusyContacts for MacOS only. Works also perfect with BusyCal.
Cardhop by Flexibits - never tried it because it needs a Flexibits account. And has too much “bubblegum” UI.
I was a satisfied BusyContacts (& BusyCal) customer years ago until Apple blocked its ability to list email. It appears that feature is now back, correct?
Yes. Apple Contacts was never great, but whose bright idea was Contact Posters? I have 385 business and personal contacts and not one person has ever used the feature.
I haven’t seen a ton of uptake, but maybe 5% of my contacts have set posters and they tend to be the more frequent contacts. It spreads epidemically, as people see it when calling or being called. They look nice.
Ever since the demise of Ecco Pro, which I’ve waxed about on MPU in other threads, I have yet to find a contacts app that’s really good. And since iOS 27, Apple Contacts has been an utter disaster. All my tags on phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, and mailing addresses have all be stripped. Not to worry, I have a great back up. Day after the back up, stripped again. This happened for so long it was crazy. No amount of feedback or tech support calls did anything.
Almost anything on my phone is replaceable. My contacts database is my most prized possession. It has been devastating to have to keep fixing this, but at least I have a trustworthy back up so I’m not starting from zero.
I wish some nerd with an absolute passion for making a robust contacts database would take over the design job for apple contacts. It would be my personal mission in life to guide the process if Tim would just call me. I’ll do it for free. Just put me in the game. I have to use claude or something, though, because my legal training provides no useful sklls when it comes to actually implementing an app.
Don’t get me started about E-mail clients or I’ll start whining about how much I still miss Eudora.
P.S. I really like the contact posters. I think they are fun. Although, I often have to apologize to my professional contacts for my contacts poster. But I’m happy to pay that price in order to have something in computing that has some pizzaz to it.
Contacts is the most “un-Apple” software around. Some sort of institutional blindness prevents management from seeing how bad it is.
Anyway, I like Busy Contacts. A simple, thoughtful feature is the ability to see on the contact card which groups a contact is a member of. (BC uses “tags” not “groups”.)
Because when I bought my M1 everything on your list didn’t suck. Tahoe made everything that just sucked a little bit suck 10 times worse. So… That is one reason.
Second, there is no real alternative? Windows is 100 times worse and Linux is… Linux.
Simple! Due to all the great third-party (mostly indie) apps that aren’t available on other platforms.
In my case, Apple should pay indie devs a cut — not the other way around. (I’ve ended up using almost no stock apps, as I always find third-party alternatives I like more. That’s why annoyed when Apple forces their alternative on me, like with Finder. From your list I only use Maps.)
They look nice.
