Contacts app is a nightmare on Tahoe.

[LynBee]

Okay? So what uhh specifically frustrates you with the contacts app? To me it's just fine

Try exporting selected fields to Excel and you will soon see just one of the problems. Clunky as. You have to export to numbers and then to Excel. I used to be able to select the set of contacts, select fields I wanted, and then export directly to Excel or any other spreadsheet for that matter. I wonder if Apple is employing cheap foreign labour to write these programs. The programmers simply have no idea of the needs of wide range of users.

 

[LynBee]

I use the free version Fantastical on my iPhone (okay with stock iOS Contacts) and I recall trying it on my Mac (less thrilled and deleted) and Cardhop (ditto) some years ago.

But whatever Apple has done to Contacts in Mac 26 (so much wasted space and flickering), along with your posting above had me remember and revisit Cardhop again. Even free version so much better than stock mess. I'm gonna stick with it for now - maybe, eventually, Apple will restore app to stable functionality.
Or not.

Absolutely agree with you. It is one of the most clunky interfaces and seems to have lost many of its features, such as exporting selected fields within a group of selected contacts to a CSV file.

 

[ThrowerGB]

Lots to not like about the new version of Contacts in Tahoe.

• One that bothers me is the dark blue cursor against the dark grey background makes it hard to see. For me at least.
• And yes there's a lot of wasted space
• I haven't yet figured out copy from the app and then paste in another app.
  • In fact, there are many places in the latest versions of MacOS & iOS where actions aren't intuitive. Things like 1 vs 2 vs 3 vs 4 finger swiping etc. I just have to avoid those actions.

It reminds me of being able to tell when human factors folk were left out of the loop.

 

[svenmany]

Lots to not like about the new version of Contacts in Tahoe.

• One that bothers me is the dark blue cursor against the dark grey background makes it hard to see. For me at least.
• And yes there's a lot of wasted space
• I haven't yet figured out copy from the app and then paste in another app.
  • In fact, there are many places in the latest versions of MacOS & iOS where actions aren't intuitive. Things like 1 vs 2 vs 3 vs 4 finger swiping etc. I just have to avoid those actions.

It reminds me of being able to tell when human factors folk were left out of the loop.

What I've started doing, with regard to the color problem, is to have a particular icon that assign to any contact that doesn't have one yet. Currently, I'm tending to use a giraffe head. It seems any choice of a memoji causes the coloring of the whole entry to be the same kind of grey; it's more readable for me. You can also choose an emoji and the background is colored like the background of the emoji. The main benefit for me is that the gradient coloring of the background is removed once I assign something.

The wasted space doesn't affect me since I have a wheel on my mouse. Every time I open a contact, I immediately scroll the content up, covering the spot that has the picture.

 

[MareLuce]

Your workaround - hysterical yet clever

If I were your buddy and saw you had assigned a giraffe emoji to me,
I’d wonder if you thought I had an abnormally long neck ;-)———-

 

[svenmany]

I realize that my trick of eliminating the gradient and changing the color by assigning a contact photo won't work if there's a "poster" assigned to the contact.

On macOS, only the contact photo can be edited. In iOS, the contact photo and poster can both be. If you inadvertently assigned a poster to the contact on iOS, it will show on macOS, and changes to the contact photo won't make any difference. You'll be stuck with whatever gradient you're given by the poster.

And then there's iOS. Once you assign a poster to a contact on iOS, there's no way to remove it.

It's hard not to laugh at just how bad this app is. As crappy as I feel when I have to look at it, I suspect the developers feel worse. They were told to implement what they did by some manager. They are probably quite embarrassed by it all.

 

[adrianlondon]

And then there's iOS. Once you assign a poster to a contact on iOS, there's no way to remove it.

If it's any help, you can get rid of them on MacOS. Export the entry as a vcard, delete it, and re-import it. The export doesn't include the poster.

Just part of the "nightmare" inconsistencies of the app which is actually working in our favour (at the moment!).

 

[diego.caraballo]

Absurdly still flashing after Tahoe 26.2 update...

 

[Wolf1701]

Absurdly still flashing after Tahoe 26.2 update...

Time for pats on the back and production bonuses at Apple now... see you around February/March with 26.4 and when MacRumors starts announcing that Tahoe development is slowing down because most resources will go to MacOS 27 development.

 

[DerKrobsesn]

I just upgraded to Tahoe two days ago. Agree, Tahoe contacts is USELESS -- huge, graphic interface. Waste of space. I tried to copy a phone number and it placed a call. Absolutely terrible.

Same here. So slow and beachball. Tahoe has been a nightmare on several fronts but Contacts has not resolved itself, despite erase and reinstall (it got that bad)

 

[mscuthbert]

Absurdly still flashing after Tahoe 26.2 update...

Sorry that's happening for you. I came here to say that this was the only improvement to the app I've seen in 26.2 -- for my M4 Macbook Air, the flickering went away. Everything else (panes not resizable, huge wasted space, low visual contrast between light blue and white) is still the same mess.

Not upgrading my main desktop to Tahoe specifically because of the flaws in Contacts.

 

[diego.caraballo]

Sorry that's happening for you. I came here to say that this was the only improvement to the app I've seen in 26.2 -- for my M4 Macbook Air, the flickering went away. Everything else (panes not resizable, huge wasted space, low visual contrast between light blue and white) is still the same mess.

Not upgrading my main desktop to Tahoe specifically because of the flaws in Contacts.

I'm so jealous! 😢
Enjoy my M2 Disco Mode...

 

[mscuthbert]

I'm so jealous! 😢
Enjoy my M2 Disco Mode...

I take back what I said -- mine still enters flicker disco mode if I've clicked into a field like the notes field. Then it's still all flicker.

 

[svenmany]

I noticed some things on my computer regarding the flickering. Only items that have no contact picture or poster assigned flicker. Thats at least 90% of my 700 contacts. If I select one of the those contacts, it does not initially flicker. If I then use my mouse scroll wheel on the contact list, the flickering begins. I do use Logi Options+ software to control my MX Master 3.

I'm not sure it's the scroll wheel itself causing problems, but the application's response to mouse events. I once saw a particular contact change as I moved my mouse over different other contacts on the list to the left. Certainly using the scroll wheel causes different contacts to be positioned under the mouse.

Once the flickering starts by using the scroll wheel, it continues to flicker even if I don't touch the mouse. It flickers about once a second. The flickering stops when I switch to a different application, even if I use the scroll wheel to scroll the contact list while the application is in the background.

It's not entirely consistent.

Is anyone who is getting the flickering NOT using a Logitech mouse? I'd like to rule out the Logi Options+ software being the culprit.

 

[mscuthbert]

Is anyone who is getting the flickering NOT using a Logitech mouse? I'd like to rule out the Logi Options+ software being the culprit.

Not Logitech -- happens with the MacBook Air built-in Trackpad and Magic Mouse. Otherwise the symptoms/triggers seems identical to yours.

 

[hoobury]

One more complaint from me. When I searched for a term, I remember the old contact app would highlight the search term in the results. For instance, if I was trying to find something in the notes section.

Tahoe returns the contact name but then I have to scroll through the entire note trying to find what I searched for.

I know several people here have commented on how much they use the notes section of the contacts for information so am I remembering that correctly?

It's just another step backward for usability/ efficiency.

 

[Wolf1701]

One more complaint from me. When I searched for a term, I remember the old contact app would highlight the search term in the results. For instance, if I was trying to find something in the notes section.

...

It's just another step backward for usability/ efficiency.

It reminds me of what happened with the first iWork... it was a wonderful suite that covered many areas and was very, very well designed from the outset.

Then they wanted to make it more like iOS... years later, it still hasn't fully recovered.

 

[adrianlondon]

One more complaint from me. When I searched for a term, I remember the old contact app would highlight the search term in the results. For instance, if I was trying to find something in the notes section.

Tahoe returns the contact name but then I have to scroll through the entire note trying to find what I searched for.

I know several people here have commented on how much they use the notes section of the contacts for information so am I remembering that correctly?

It's just another step backward for usability/ efficiency.

I stick by my earlier comment that people should be careful what they store in the notes field, as I'm assuming apps which ask for Contacts access (such as Whatsapp) get access to every field.

This implies every app that you give Contacts access to can read every field, including notes:

Contact Keys | Apple Developer Documentation

Specify contact-related properties during fetch operations.

developer.apple.com