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How to delete all contacts on iPhone
The iPhone Contacts app doesn't have a 'Select All' button. The fastest way to delete everything is via iCloud.com on a desktop: Contacts > Cmd-A > Delete.
The fastest path
Before doing this, back up to a vCard with Pluck. Deletion via iCloud.com is irrevocable once the trash empties (30 days). Pluck's backup gives you a restore path that doesn't depend on iCloud.
Why this happens
iOS treats Contacts as a synced system across iCloud, app-specific accounts (Google, Exchange), and the local on-device store. Most user-visible weirdness. Missing contacts, duplicates after restore, sync hangs. Traces back to which 'source' a contact lives in. Settings > Contacts > Accounts is where you can see all of them.
Apple's own documentation is light on the multi-source model. The practical version: every contact has a source. If you delete from one source, others might still have a copy. If you back up to vCard, you snapshot everything across all sources into one file.
Step by step
1. Open iCloud.com on a desktop browser. Sign in with the Apple ID that owns the contacts.
2. Click Contacts. The full list loads (may take a minute for 5,000+ entries).
3. Use the gear icon in the bottom-left for bulk actions: Export vCard (full backup), Restore Contacts (rewind up to 30 days), or Delete.
4. On the phone itself, Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Contacts toggle controls whether iCloud syncs at all. Toggling off then on forces a re-sync.
If it doesn't work
The 'sign out of iCloud and sign back in' move is the iOS equivalent of restart-your-router. It works ~70% of the time. Before doing it, take a vCard backup with Pluck. Sign-out can occasionally leave contacts in a stale state on first sign-in.
Worst case: restore from a Finder/iTunes backup (Mac) or restore the device. A periodic vCard backup avoids this entirely by giving you an offline restore path that doesn't depend on iCloud being healthy.
Prevent it next time
Two habits prevent 90% of contacts-disappeared / sync-issue panics: keep one canonical source (just iCloud, or just Google, not both), and back up to vCard quarterly. The first prevents merge conflicts; the second gives you a restore point that doesn't expire.
Pluck's one-tap VCF backup is built for exactly this. AirDrop the file to your Mac, store it in iCloud Drive, or email it to yourself. Three copies, three places, full backup.
Get Pluck for iPhone
Pluck does the steps in this guide on your iPhone, with no server, no account, and no analytics. Group your contacts by country, find duplicates the iOS tool misses, and export to CSV, Excel, TXT, or vCard.