How to transfer contacts from iPhone to Android

Switching from iPhone to Android is more common than Apple wants to admit. Google ships a "Switch to Android" app and Apple ships a "Move to iOS" app for the reverse, both of which try to handle contacts. They sometimes work. When they don't, the universally reliable path is a vCard file imported into Google Contacts.

The reliable method: vCard via Google Contacts

This works for any Android phone, regardless of manufacturer, regardless of which Apple ID, regardless of contact count.

Step 1: Make a clean vCard from your iPhone

Three options, in order of recommendation:

• Pluck on your iPhone: tap Backup, save the .vcf to Files. One step, on-device, RFC-compliant.
• macOS Contacts: select all, File → Export → Export vCard.
• iCloud.com: select all, gear menu → Export vCard.

If you want to also dedupe and clean up before the migration, do it now. Once contacts are on the Android phone, fixing them is harder. See how to merge duplicates.

Step 2: Get the file off the iPhone

Email the .vcf to yourself, AirDrop it to a Mac and then upload, or save to a cloud storage you can reach from a desktop browser.

Step 3: Import into Google Contacts

1. Open contacts.google.com in a desktop browser.
2. Sign in with the Google account that's set up on your Android phone.
3. Left sidebar → Import → pick the .vcf.
4. Wait. Large files (10k+ contacts) take a couple of minutes.

Step 4: Sync the Google account on Android

On the Android phone, go to Settings → Accounts → Google → make sure Contacts sync is on. Within a minute or two, contacts appear in the phone's Contacts app. Done.

What about Apple's Move to Android app?

Apple now publishes a guide for transferring to Android, and Google has a Switch to Android app that runs on iPhone. They work in many cases. Where they fail:

• Older Android devices (pre-2022) sometimes can't pair via the QR-code flow.
• If iCloud Contacts contains duplicates, the migration can amplify them on the Android side.
• If you have contacts spread across multiple iCloud groups or sources, only the active ones may be picked up.
• Notes and custom fields are sometimes dropped silently.

If you try the official tools and they work cleanly, great. If anything looks off, fall back to the vCard method above — that's the format Google ultimately stores in any case.

Things to clean up before you migrate

Migration is a good moment to clean house, because you're going to look at every contact in the new phone anyway. Worth doing:

• Dedupe. See how to find duplicates iOS misses.
• Format phone numbers consistently. Convert everything to E.164. Android's contact app handles all formats but Google Voice, WhatsApp, and most messaging apps prefer the international form.
• Drop empty contacts. Email-only contacts you'll never use, ancient business cards, etc. See removing contacts without phone numbers.

What gets transferred

vCard 3.0 carries: name, multiple phones, multiple emails, organization, address, notes, photo, birthday. It does not carry: ringtones, custom labels Apple-specific iOS-only fields, Apple-only relationship tags. If those matter to you, plan to re-add them on the Android side.