'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
How to merge duplicate contacts in Android
When was the last time you scanned through your contacts on your Android device? After migrating from device to device to device, I find that sometimes contacts can get duplicated. This could also be an issue if you've imported contacts from various sources or simply added the contact not knowing it was already there.
Regardless of why you've wound up with those duplicate contacts, what do you do? Do you live with them or do something about them? If you leave them as-is, it could make your experience a bit less than efficient. When you go to send/share/contact a person, you'll have to select from multiple instances and that is not exactly the most optimal way of working. Because of that, your best bet is to merge those duplicate entries and I'm going to show you how to do just that.
Requirements
The only thing you need for this is an Android device that contains your contacts. As long as the version of Android is relatively new (say, version 10 and newer), you should be able to follow along. I'll be demonstrating with Android 12 on a Pixel 6 Pro.
With that said, let's merge those duplicates.
Merging duplicate contacts
1. Open Contacts
The first thing to do is open the Contacts app. Swipe up to reveal your App Drawer and locate the Contacts app (Figure 1).
The Contacts app is found in the Android App Drawer.
2. Fix your contacts
With Contacts open, tap Fix & Manage at the bottom of the app (Figure 2).
The Contacts app Fix & Manage tab is where you can take care of several issues.
From that window, tap Merge & Fix, and then, in the resulting screen (Figure 3), tap Merge duplicates.
Merge & fix offers a few handy options, such as adding people you email often.
In the next screen (Figure 4), you have the option of merging contacts one at a time or merging them all at once. To expedite the process, tap Merge all at the bottom right.
Merging all of your duplicates at once is a single tap away.
If you've never done this, you'll probably find quite a large number of duplicate entries, so merging all is probably your best option. After tapping Merge all, you will be asked to OK the merging of the contacts Android found to be duplicated (Figure 5).
I have 86 duplicates in my Contacts app.
Tap OK and the contacts will be merged and your Contacts app will then be slightly cleaner and more efficient.
And that's all there is to merge duplicate contacts in Android. Do this every so often to keep those contacts clean and you'll find your Android experience will be simplified and easier.