Remove Suggested Contacts From Your iPhone's Share Menu

[MacRumors]

When you go to share something on your iPhone, iOS tries to be helpful by displaying a row of suggested contacts at the top of the Share menu. Keep reading to learn how to get rid of them.

Whenever you go to share something on your iPhone or iPad using the Share button, iOS brings up a Share menu – often called the Share Sheet – at the top of which is a row of suggested contacts with whom you've interacted recently. Swiping along this row reveals more contacts, and the icon in the corner of each profile picture indicates the app that you often use to communicate with that person.

These suggested contacts are useful if you share a lot of things with the same people, but there may be times when you'd prefer not to see specific contacts there, for example if someone is a duplicate suggestion over multiple apps, or if you don't want to draw attention to your regular comms with a certain someone. Whatever the reason, you can actually steer these sharing suggestions to appear less often, or not at all. Here's how.

Make Contacts Appear Less Often in the Share Menu

1. Tap the Share button (the box with an arrow pointing out) in any app to bring up the Share Sheet.
2. Long press on the suggested contact that you want to see less often in the Share menu.
3. Tap Suggest Less in the popover menu.

Bear in mind, doing this won't guarantee that the contact doesn't appear in the Share Sheet again in future, but if you keep repeating it whenever they do show up, iOS will eventually get the message.

Remove All Contacts From iPhone Share Menu

Short of deleting their contact in the Contacts app, the only way to guarantee that someone doesn't keep turning up on your Share Sheet is to disable the contact suggestions row completely.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap Siri & Search.
3. Under the "Suggestions From Apple" section, toggle off the switch next to Show When Sharing.

That's all there is to it. Now the next time you invoke the Share Sheet, you won't see any contact profiles at the top. You can reverse the change just as easily by switching on the Show When Sharing toggle again.

Article Link: Remove Suggested Contacts From Your iPhone's Share Menu

 

[Lyrics23]

This is useful. I’ve literally never shared anything to iMessage from the share sheet, but iOS regularly inserts an iMessage duplicate of the WhatsApp contacts I actually do regularly share with.

It will be nice to finally be able to clean that up a bit.

 

[davidh2k]

Unlike quick access apps in spotlight I can sometimes just shake my head on the recommendations. „You wrote once with those 3-5 persons, you clearly want to share with them.“ „Nah, I wanne share with those i already selected manually last time, duh“

Oh and sometimes freeform is very prominent on place 3-5 and telegram far behind it. I think I used that app, maybe once?

 

[A Hobo]

Why is some of this advice seemingly towards those who as you put it ‘if you don't want to draw attention to your regular comms with a certain someone.’ So cheaters? Liars?

Hey, MR if you want to encourage deception why not just tell people about Snapchat and the way it works, that stuff deletes itself and you don’t need to adjust your phones settings to obscure who you’re communicating with in secrecy from the people actually around you. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Klae17]

I just like talking sh*t about Brenda from Accounting and don’t want to accidentally share with the group chat.

 

[ozaz]

Why is some of this advice seemingly towards those who as you put it ‘if you don't want to draw attention to your regular comms with a certain someone.’ So cheaters? Liars?

Hey, MR if you want to encourage deception why not just tell people about Snapchat and the way it works, that stuff deletes itself and you don’t need to adjust your phones settings to obscure who you’re communicating with in secrecy from the people actually around you. 🤷‍♂️

Personally, I just don't like it when phones/computers try to "helpfully" surface information/access points they think I need, leading to modification of an interface. I'd much rather an interface remained fixed and under my control.

 

[TechRemarker]

iOS does not get the message if you keep hiding. You can hide a person daily for a year and they will keep coming back if you keep messaging them. Which is unfortunate since there are people in life you have to message but that you definitely do not want to mistakenly text when clicking on the face of someone who you do text all the time. Hate you can’t block people for good or have that section only show favorited people.

 

[fatTribble]

Like many features in iOS, I think having the ability just to choose the contacts to display would be better than trying to figure out what I want. So often iOS wants to do something automatically when I’d much rather just have the control over it. 🤓

 

[noblesoul117]

This is exactly what I needed! I remember during the beta I gave Apple feedback about how much I disliked this feature.

As an introvert, I don’t even want to be bothered with thinking of a person or being reminded of them, unless I already have the intention to connect. I can’t stand these inane “social features” that get baked in everywhere. My phone is my most private computer, not an octopus for reaching out to everyone I’ve barely talked to.

Very happy that this is one of those “Apple Things” we can actually change, and that I learned how to do so from this article. I should’ve hunted this down way earlier but gave up when Apple never responded in the beta feedback.

 

[Greybeard2017]

This is really useful - the first option didn't seem to work but the second has fixed things - I always use share to move files of various sorts between my own devices and never want to risk sending them to various trades people on my contact list

 

[arkitect]

Make Contacts Appear Less Often in the Share Menu

👍 Thank you!

It drives me up the wall when it keeps suggesting people I might have been in contact with once and never again.

 

[Japan Ricardo]

The feature would be good quite if it worked. When I share something, the suggested people always seem to include ones I don't want to share with, and never the one person I do...

 

[Japan Ricardo]

I just like talking sh*t about Brenda from Accounting and don’t want to accidentally share with the group chat.

Or Brenda.....

 

[robvalentine]

It would be useful if it realised that suggesting I WhatsApp my GF and not iMessage my GF would be way more usable. I only ever iMessage her by accident...

 

[Japan Ricardo]

Why is some of this advice seemingly towards those who as you put it ‘if you don't want to draw attention to your regular comms with a certain someone.’ So cheaters? Liars?

Hey, MR if you want to encourage deception why not just tell people about Snapchat and the way it works, that stuff deletes itself and you don’t need to adjust your phones settings to obscure who you’re communicating with in secrecy from the people actually around you. 🤷‍♂️

There's a fine line between privacy and deception - or at least a grey area between them...

You seem to know a lot about Snapchat, though...

 

[Japan Ricardo]

On my Mac, I only get four suggestions (usually not including the one I want) and can't scroll across a longer list as far as I can see....

 

[ZeroInspo]

Why is some of this advice seemingly towards those who as you put it ‘if you don't want to draw attention to your regular comms with a certain someone.’ So cheaters? Liars?

Hey, MR if you want to encourage deception why not just tell people about Snapchat and the way it works, that stuff deletes itself and you don’t need to adjust your phones settings to obscure who you’re communicating with in secrecy from the people actually around you. 🤷‍♂️

Damn you are salty af my friend. I just don’t want suggestions to potentially bring up my side piece when I’m doing something in my phone while my gf is looking, no need to be mad.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

I was wondering what this was about because it sounds really annoying, so I checked my settings.

Yep, I'd already turned it off.

And what's with all the people using What'sCrapp? I don't allow F*c*book garbage on my devices, I can't imaging actually using that for messaging.

 

[Japan Ricardo]

I was wondering what this was about because it sounds really annoying, so I checked my settings.

Yep, I'd already turned it off.

And what's with all the people using What'sCrapp? I don't allow F*c*book garbage on my devices, I can't imaging actually using that for messaging.

You almost feel you have no choice in some European situations. It's like LINE here in Japan. Most people use it as their default messaging app (partly because it's cross-platform) - and 99% of them are unaware or don't care how they use their data, who owns them or how they make money.

 

[H00513R]

I have it enabled, but I don’t see any suggestions when sharing. I even tried sharing multiple types of media. Maybe I have it blocked another way? (I do have notifications off in that section.)

 

[robvalentine]

And what's with all the people using What'sCrapp? I don't allow F*c*book garbage on my devices, I can't imaging actually using that for messaging.

No one outside of the US uses iMessage. Privacywise its about the same as apple really, except you can chat to people on android. I don't see the point in cutting off half my friends just to not use an app that FB instead of Apple tracks.

 

[Japan Ricardo]

No one outside of the US uses iMessage.

Rubbish.

I do.

So does everyone I need to contact (in various countries).

 

[robvalentine]

Rubbish.

I do.

So does everyone I need to contact (in various countries).

I meant it figuratively, iMessage useage in Europe is tiny, pretty much everyone uses Whatsapp, so no not rubbish.

 

[Thebugeyes]

I'd prefer to be able to select my own list of contacts to have on the share sheet.
And also to be able to add email addresses, I regularly email things to myself as a reminder, would be nice to have my email as a share sheet entry..

 

[macduke]

God forbid they just let us show our favorites there. Instead it has to use AI to figure out what we want, which is almost always wrong.

I also don’t get why it’s so bad with context. For instance, my daughter is home sick today, so in the share sheet the first item is her AirDrop to her iPad for this MacRumors article. Why would you ever send a link over AirDrop? That’s for sending things like full size photos or videos. And yet her Messages contact is nowhere to be found in the list, but my son’s is, even though he’s younger and I very rarely ever text him.