Hidden phone contacts...

[StarShot]

Recently I've noticed contacts seem to be missing (deleted?) from my iPhone Mini running 14.4. I went into setting to see if I might find the reason. I saw an option to "hide contacts" (at that time I still had some contacts in my directory). I clicked on "hide contacts" with the thought I would then "unhide" them and maybe recover some of the missing ones.

In a internet search it says go to Setting/icloud, but I can't find anything to unhide them. I assume they're in a backup, but I'm worried the backup may get overwritten with loss of my contacts forever.

FWIW, my contacts are still available on my MBP, but don't know if I can sync them to my phone. I DON'T want to lose the few I have left on my MBP.

Any help would be very appreciated. As you're probably aware, the internet is a very bad place to find how fix something as the links are full of procedures that were for previous editions of iOS.

In searching above, I think I saw something that said I had 3 previous backups.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

There's no setting in Settings > Contacts for hiding contacts.

However, if you have more than one contacts account (such as having contacts enabled in both iCloud and Gmail/Yahoo/AOL/Outlook.com, etc.) or created groups within one of those accounts (groups can't be created on iOS, but they can be created on Mac or at the website of those contacts accounts that support a group/lists function), the Contacts app will display a Groups option in the upper left. Groups allows you to enable/disable viewing particular accounts and/or groups/lists created within an account. That's equivalent to "show/hide contacts," although it's not labeled as such.

Anyway, if you are using cloud-based contacts accounts (iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook.com, etc.) then they will NOT be part of an iPhone backup. Only "On this iPhone" contacts (contacts not synced to a cloud account) would be part of a backup. So, no point to erasing and restoring from a backup unless you have at least some contacts On This iPhone.

If you inadvertently deleted contacts from iCloud you may be able to retrieve them from an archive... https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/restore-contacts-calendars-reminders-mme6182cfc37/icloud

 

[StarShot]

If you inadvertently deleted contacts from iCloud you may be able to retrieve them from an archive... https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/restore-contacts-calendars-reminders-mme6182cfc37/icloud

Thanks, I'll give that a try...This morning I noticed my phone directory came back WITHOUT any input from me.