A coworker showed me his phone and he had all his contacts broken down into different groups. I’m curious if anyone else does this or how you use the contacts group? I don’t use it maybe I should, but not really sure how to use it in a good way.
i had tried this a few years back but didn’t stick with it and between incompatability between work and home contacts (Windows at Work, Apple at Home), it just broke down. I am looking though for improved Contacts management. Would like something like a tagging system. Hoping others respond to you with good ideas.
I treat contact groups like tags, since you can assign one contact to multiple groups. I use Cardhop on the Mac, which plays very nicely with groups. Easy to add contacts to groups, search by groups, and it has “smart groups” which allow you to make complex filters.
I also have Cardhop on iOS, but I don’t find myself needing it too often.
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I have groups defined for any committee that I serve on where I need to email people. That way I can email them just by typing the group name, but the email addresses still appear as individuals.
Unfortunately there’s no good way to manage Contact groups on iOS (or at least none that I am aware of) so you have to do it on the Mac.
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I use them to manage group mailings. To Family, Siblings, Pickleball players. Basically groups in my life that I have occasion to send emails.
A second use is for people in my Contacts that are there for a reason but still fairly obscure and I an apt to forget who they are. I have a group of contacts for people who live in the neighborhood of my summer house. I am not all that familiar with their names. But it means that I can look them up when the occasion requires.
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OT – I’ve noticed that Contact groups are not syncing to Contacts on iOS 14.x. The groups appear in Contacts on iOS, but there are no members in the groups when I go to use a group in Mail on iOS.
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Hmm, seems to be working on 14 for me.
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I have the same issue and as I write this I’m on tech support with Apple.
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FWIW, I use Airmail on iOS – which syncs contacts with Contacts. The group members appear in Airmail emails. Perhaps it’s possible that Airmail is somehow interfering with Mail? I don’t know – any culprit will do 
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I don’t use Airmail but I will try Spark, which I use as a back up if and as needed. That said, I just sent screen recordings and a whole series of profile logs to Apple engineering. They are aware of this issue and I am certain they will come up with a solution. It’s a bit of a pain but will get there. 
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When I was still working, I created groups for internal departments, companies, and occasionally projects. Today my groups are personal and might be something like companions I traveled with, i.e. #guatemala2018 or an organization to which I belong.
Correct. You cannot create a group on IOS. And if you are a Gmail user, like me, the groups you create in Google Contacts are actually labels that do not sync with your contacts. So to create a iCloud group on IOS, you need a Mac. Or you can log into iCloud.com and create one there. But then you cannot add 3rd party email contacts (i.e. Gmail) to an iCloud group.
So instead, I use hashtags in the notes area of the contact card. #guatemala2018, #church, #mpusers. I can search for a hashtag, tap on the address, and my default email client will open a new message and fill in the info.
If you want to email multiple people with a “group address” that’s a bit more work. You will need to create a new contact card, put the group name in the Company field, then add everyone’s address to the same email address field (separated by commas):
richie@mail.ext, laverne@mail2.ext,shirley@mail3.ext
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I love using groups in contacts to organize them. Cardhop for ios and mac does a great job of handling contacts. Icloud accounts allows you to to view those accounts. On the contacts app on Mac, you can create smart groups that will filter results based on a search and I created some smart groups using a tag-like system. I wish that one could have that synced to ios.
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Great tip! It works perfectly on the Mac and on iOS/iPadOS. Thank you.
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I use contact groups quite a bit. I am still using the standard Apple Contacts App but considering switching to CardHop.
In addition to groups like Farm related, personal I also have a group Inbox for incoming addreses I may or may not keep around and a Farley File group for old ones that are in stasis or just archived. I make extensive use of #tag type things in the note filed so I have a smart group that is for Notify Emergency Family and one for Notify Death and instructions on how to access and use them and what conditions result in their use in a paper backup file accessible to the people who would be dealing with either of those situations.
What I wish I had, and I think CardHop can do it but not sure yet, is a way to see a contact and see easily what groups it is in. That is the one big thing missing from the Apple Contacts app.
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Yes, Cardhop shows a contact’s groups on the contact card.
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Thanks for that confirmation. I’ve got CardHop on my list of apps to test and verify before implementing, along with several PDF readers and other things as I am working on modifying my technology/app stack right now. In retrospect it seems like this is something I do about every 2-3 years. That seems to be when I revamp my tools, often nothing more than upgrading to new versions but sometimes like now involving major new classes of apps and ways of doing things. (my whole Zotero/Obsidian/DEVONThink experiment)
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I agree this is a significant shortcoming of Contacts app on Mac and iOS. Seems so basic. Glad that Cardhop does have this info in plain sight.
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Based on this thread, I downloaded Cardhop. So far am loving it. I was in great need of recommitting to organizing my Contacts. I have now created on the order of 50 groups, which I am treating as akin to tags. Was able to sort through circa 1,000 contacts and file accordingly. Was really much easier and more manageable a project than I expected. I like the UI and the aggregation of IOS, Gmail, 5 different emails I am managing, etc. All in one place. Only very minor issue is that synch between Mac and IOS has not been instantaneous though not sure if that is my fault or an app issue (using Big Sur and latest iOS 14 software on 2017 iMac, 2018 iPad Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro).
One pleasant surprise: The Cardhop YouTube tutorials are done by @MacSparky. Super helpful and made me instantly comfortable.
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I’ve noticed the slowness in sync for some of my contacts that are on icloud and gmail accounts. Sometimes, I’ll force a refresh on the ios or macos contacts app. However, ultimately they end up being synced.
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