Most iPhone users, or users of any phone for that matter, have many contacts on their device which they have a hard time keeping up with and organizing. You can manually go through your address book and edit the few hundred or thousand contacts you’ve collected over the past few years or so, which might take a good amount of time, of course. Cleanup Duplicate Contacts ($1.99, App Store Link) changes this process dramatically by going through all your contacts in your address book automatically and editing or deleting certain contacts depending on which options you choose.
When developing Cleanup Duplicate Contacts, Wim de Nood did great work with the UI. The app gives pretty simple step-by-step instructions on how the app works and different options you can choose, then towards the end of the process, an option to delete certain contacts. As soon as you launch the app, you’re greeted with an introduction, then a screen called “Merge Level”.
Once you get to this screen, there are a number of options you can choose to start the cleanup process of your contacts. The first option, remove 100% duplicates, deletes any contact that matches on all fields including: number, email address, physical address, etc. There’s a slim chance that you may have a 100% duplicate contact, but the few you may have are collected by Cleanup Duplicate Contacts and you can choose to delete one of them.
The next edit option that the app offers is to merge contacts if names match. If you happen to have two different contacts and both the first and last names are exactly the same, Cleanup Duplicate Contacts will merge those contacts into one contact. I noticed it only works with two contacts. If by any chance you happen to have three different contacts with the same name, it will only take the two contacts which have the most fields in them.
The last two merge levels in the app are the ability to merge when emails match and when the same phone number matches. The merge email options worked pretty well. I did have one or two instances where the emails that were common weren’t the same contact in the first place, but that’s why you have the option to validate and review results.
The merge phone number option worked good as well. I did have three common phone numbers, but only two of those matches ended up being the same person. Cleanup Duplicate Contacts has the ability to scan over 5,000 contacts in 45 seconds, which saves a great amount of time over going through your contacts and cleaning up your address book manually. Once you’re done scanning all you contacts and you’re taken to the screen with detailed results of your contacts. The page shows 100% and partial contacts. If you choose not to merge certain ones, you can deselect those and still merge the one you want saved.
Overall, Cleanup Duplicate Contacts is a great productivity app with a lot to offer and a good time saver. The app also has the ability to manage contact sources from Gmail and iCloud, besides just locally from your iPhone or iPad. Since you have the advantage to manage sources from iCloud, Cleanup Duplicate Contacts only works with devices compatible with iOS 5.0 or later. If you’re address book is even the slightest bit disorganized with missing fields or out of order, don’t hesitate to check out Cleanup Duplicate Contacts.
Price: $1.99, App Store Link
Rating: 4.5/5[rating:4,5]
Pros:
- Ability to scan over 5,000 contacts in 45 seconds
- Nice interface
- Manages contact sources from iCloud and Gmail
Cons:
- Can be a little buggy on iPad
- On occasion a few fields mix with completely different contacts
Note: This has been a paid review via Review Roster
