iCloud Contacts kept in sync between two AppleID accounts

[Jakimo]

Good evening;

I'm going to give this a shot to see if anyone has found a better solution

First, I'll explain. My wife and I have had iPhones from the start. My setup is simple, hers hasn't been.. as we like to keep Contacts shared and Calendars shared. Apple solved the Calendar problem, but not the Contacts problem. So what I've done all this time, is have her AppleID (used for everything else on her phone) Contacts off, create one local contact on her phone for herself to be identified by, then add my AppleID as a secondary account just for Contacts and cause her default account to be my Contacts list.. this way we share the list and anything she adds goes everywhere and vice versa

This way if she identifies who she is, that fact doesn't sync over to me. I identify with my own contact, and it doesn't change on her device

Well, this time I'm not getting it to work. If I tell my phone who I am in Contacts, her phone changes to my name even though her AppleID doesn't have Contacts on or syncing in the cloud. If I fix that in her phone, it ends up changing my devices etc etc

What's another way to do this? Using a Mac to simply copy my contact list to her contact list won't sync them. If she adds someone or changes something, I won't see the changes and she'll forget to tell me to fix it in the master contact list (I constantly have to clean it up, when she makes changes.. for example one contact will have "Susan (met at church)" all as the first name. I'll go and fix that and put her notes in the notes section of the contact, etc etc. hehe

Anyone have ideas? What have you guys done to share one AppleID contact list for both spouses?

thanks

 

[BrianBaughn]

I suppose the reason Apple doesn't have a support page for sharing iCloud contacts between separate accounts is that they haven't created a way to make it work consistently.

The easy thing to do is share contacts from a third-party service.

 

[Jakimo]

I suppose the reason Apple doesn't have a support page for sharing iCloud contacts between separate accounts is that they haven't created a way to make it work consistently.

The easy thing to do is share contacts from a third-party service.

Nah, that's a matter of will. Syncing contacts as a function is old-hat

Contacts in general needs an under-the-hood rewrite for MANY years actually.. so hopefully it'll happen and all the hangs and inconsistent sync problems will resolve

I ended up cutting ties, tired of the wrong name assigning per device. I simply cut out all my work-related contacts, leaving me with some 3k contacts.. and I Airdropped them (worked so well) to HER Contacts list. Done for now, not ideal but it'll have to work

PS - the iOS/Mac app "Contacts Sync Pro" works great between iCloud and Google/Outlook, or Google to Google syncing (but no iCloud to iCloud syncing, ugh)

 

[swandy]

Good evening;

I'm going to give this a shot to see if anyone has found a better solution

First, I'll explain. My wife and I have had iPhones from the start. My setup is simple, hers hasn't been.. as we like to keep Contacts shared and Calendars shared. Apple solved the Calendar problem, but not the Contacts problem. So what I've done all this time, is have her AppleID (used for everything else on her phone) Contacts off, create one local contact on her phone for herself to be identified by, then add my AppleID as a secondary account just for Contacts and cause her default account to be my Contacts list.. this way we share the list and anything she adds goes everywhere and vice versa

This way if she identifies who she is, that fact doesn't sync over to me. I identify with my own contact, and it doesn't change on her device

Well, this time I'm not getting it to work. If I tell my phone who I am in Contacts, her phone changes to my name even though her AppleID doesn't have Contacts on or syncing in the cloud. If I fix that in her phone, it ends up changing my devices etc etc

What's another way to do this? Using a Mac to simply copy my contact list to her contact list won't sync them. If she adds someone or changes something, I won't see the changes and she'll forget to tell me to fix it in the master contact list (I constantly have to clean it up, when she makes changes.. for example one contact will have "Susan (met at church)" all as the first name. I'll go and fix that and put her notes in the notes section of the contact, etc etc. hehe

Anyone have ideas? What have you guys done to share one AppleID contact list for both spouses?

thanks

I have asked this before (after my wife and I stopped sharing my Apple ID on her iPhone - primarily because she wanted to see all the photos in my Photo Library and it wasn't until a year ago that Apple gave the ability to share an entire library easily - and I was told by an Apple tech that they don't allow sharing of Contacts because of "security issues". (Probably husbands and wives seeing each other's list LOL) You can share individual listings with each other but not the entire library - and yes it should be an option but as of now it isn't.

 

[NoBoMac]

Thinking out loud...

Shortcuts has ability to import vCards. Can also "Find Contacts" based on last modified date. So, do an initial dump of the Contacts and then periodically run a Shortcut to find and export the changed cards. Save to a shared iCloud Drive folder. On the other phone, periodically run a Shortcut to import from the shared folder.

With this option, "Find Contacts" can also be limited to specific lists/groups (eg. skip work related groups).

Not sure if this will update cards or create duplicates, but something that might be an option.