How to remove Facebook contacts from Android

Whether you remember it or not, you may have once granted Facebook permission to store the contacts in your phone's address book. If you did, Facebook is continuously uploading these contacts to its servers.

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How do I take Facebook contacts off my phone?
How do I stop Facebook from syncing my contacts with my Android?
How do you delete synced contacts on Android?

You can find out if your phone is doing this, and stop it pretty easily.

Here's how to do that on Facebook for Android:

Open the Facebook app on your Android phone.
Tap the menu button on the top right of the screen.
Select "Settings & Privacy" near the bottom of the list.
Select the "App Settings" option.
Disable the "Continuous Contacts Upload" feature.

How to do it on Facebook for iPhone and iPad:

Tap the menu button in your iPhone or iPad Facebook app.
Select Settings.
Select Account Settings.
Select General.
Select "Upload contacts."
Turn the option off.

How to remove contacts that have already been uploaded:

First, make sure that you've followed the instructions above.
Visit Facebook's contact management page from your web browser.
Select "Remove all contacts."

Facebook is a great tool for sharing ideas, playing games to waste time, and--oh right--keeping in touch with new and old friends. Syncing contacts from the Facebook app into your contacts is useful to some, but others consider it extra clutter in their contacts area. If you feel that way, how can you remove the link between Facebook and your contact list? Follow these steps:

Step 1: Open the Facebook app on your phone.

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

Step 2: Make your way to the general menu in the app, which may require pressing the back button once or twice. The app has a tendency to load at your News Feed, which normally is useful, but not right now.

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

Step 3: Once you can see all of the options, press the Menu button and then Settings.

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

Step 4: Scroll down to and select Sync Contacts.

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

Step 5: Choose "Remove Facebook" data from the next menu and press OK.

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

The Facebook updates and other information that were once present in your Contacts list will now be removed. And, of course, you can always re-sync Facebook and your Contacts at a later time if you have a change of heart.

Facebook recently launched its native home launcher app for some high-end Android phones. Despite being one of the most discussed apps, Facebook Home did not receive a nice reception and good review. If you are a FB fan-boy, you might adore that app but for most users, it’s an app they don’t like to have over the top of everything.

As for Facebook for Android, it is a must-have app that keeps you updated with the views and status of your friends you care about. The app has a contacts sync feature and if you allow it to sync, it fetches all Facebook contacts to your Android device’s phonebook. If you have installed even Twitter client for Android, your phone can also import contacts from there.

If you have thousands of friends or followers on Facebook and Twitter and a large circle on Google Plus, you can sync all those contacts with their mail ID and phone numbers to your phone’s contacts. The feature is indeed very nice and having more and more people’s contact on our handheld device is really great. But this can also be a problem for many users. In most cases, our Facebook/ Twitter/ Google+ friends are those whom we do not know personally, or at least they are such people with whom we share images and opinions but not necessarily our personal things by calling them.

Thousands of names in our phone’s address book might prove a nuisance each time you have to select a contact to call. You can use the alphabet indexer to make scrolling a little easier but it can still feel bad. Personally, I prefer my phone to show only the contacts with phone numbers.

If you see your Facebook or Twitter contacts on your phone’s address book and want to remove them, you can do this by disabling the sync feature on your Android device. Here is how:

Open your device Settings, scroll down to Facebook and tap on it. On the next screen, you will see the email ID you use to sign in your Facebook account. Tap on it and uncheck “Sync Contacts”.

You can also do it from inside the Facebook app on our phone itself. Open the app and launch the Facebook app’s options menu. Here you will see Settings, now tap it. Just scroll down and you’ll find an option called “Sync Contacts”. Tap it, check “Don’t sync” option and select “Done”.

Next, open the Contacts app on your phone and tap on the menu button. Here you’ll see an option called “Contacts to Display”. Just unmark the Facebook account and this will remove, not delete, all Facebook contacts from your device.

For more useful tips for your Android device, do not forget to take a tour of our Tips and Tricks section.

Reader Interactions

How do I take Facebook contacts off my phone?

Messenger Android and iOS:.

Open the app, then go to your profile tab and tap “People.”.

Turn off “Upload Contacts.”.

Your contacts will be automatically deleted..

How do I stop Facebook from syncing my contacts with my Android?

In the top right of Facebook, tap . Scroll down and tap Settings & Privacy, then tap Settings. Scroll down to the Permissions section and tap Upload Contacts. Tap next to Continuous Contacts Upload to turn this setting on or off.