Remove Suggested Contacts From Your iPhone's Share Menu

[caliguy]

The thing I want to turn off is when you're getting directions to a contact's house who has location sharing turned on, Maps will hang on 'Refreshing Location…' instead of letting me go to their address.

 

[dead.cell]

Finally! No more worrying about the missus asking who Jessica or Katie is. 👏

Spoiler

/s in case anyone missed the subtle J K

 

[sarcastic_middleaged_brat]

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

Simple, but very useful article! This "feature" is now completely turned off on my phone. With family and various social circles in separate group chats, I have been concerned when sharing images, articles and various other info. Now I won't "accidentally" send my conservative folks countless political memes...I'll be able to do it with intention! 😈

 

[antnythr]

I wish we could just select contacts to add / remove and not have to deal with this auto-populate or nothing nonsense.

I share lots of stuff with certain people, so I want the feature on, but I also don’t ever want to have some auto suggested contact popping up there and accidentally sending something to someone that shouldn’t receive it.

 

[Arsenikdote]

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. 🤷‍♂️

I suppose I can see how you could read it that way. However, from my perspective it is about privacy and business. I often am presenting to clients using my iPad or even laptop. If they ask that I share something with them, I have to remember not to do it while sharing my screen or another client that I don't want them to see can show up in the list. The reasons for not wanting them to see that client can range from a competitive reason all the way to legal NDA reasons.

 

[dampfnudel]

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

How much do you trust a Meta owned app? Any app with Zuck’s fingerprints on it should be viewed and used with caution in my opinion. It would’ve been better if WhatsApp stayed independent. I trust Apple a little more.

 

[dampfnudel]

Sometimes these constant suggestions can become annoying and even when they give you the option to reduce or disable these suggestions, updates sometimes “reset” these suggestions to continue annoying you. It’s not just Apple. A technological pet peeve of mine in the year 2024.

 

[SilasofMac]

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. 🤓

Yeah. I’d prefer to select favorites rather than have iOS suggest them. Would make life way easier.

 

[Japan Ricardo]

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

“Pretty much everyone.” No-one I know in Europe uses it. Not a huge sample, but as anecdotal as your assertion.

Do you know about usage in Japan? Or Australia?

 

[watakoola]

No one outside of the US uses iMessage.

Big statement. So very, very wrong.

 

[AlexJaye]

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. 🤷‍♂️

Or maybe controlling this interface should just be up to the customer?

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

I wish the suggested contacts worked properly. It will not suggest the 2-3 people I send stuff to all day every day but first chance it gets to suggest my ex or someone else I send something to for the first time in years, it'll put them up there.

What makes things worse is if a contact appears there you get different options to if they don't. Insta is an example of that. If you have to share through the app icon rather than the suggested contact you get fewer options. Classic Apple with UX they just don't care to fix because it's not new and shiny.

 

[jimtut]

How do some of you (including the author of the article) share to a specific contact in iMessage? My share sheet shows my recent WhatsApp chats and a generic iMessage icon, but I can’t directly share to a specific iMessage contact in one click.

 

[robvalentine]

How much do you trust a Meta owned app? Any app with Zuck’s fingerprints on it should be viewed and used with caution in my opinion. It would’ve been better if WhatsApp stayed independent. I trust Apple a little more.

I don't trust any tech company, I still need to use them to communicate. I trust apple as much as I trust meta, which is not a lot. At least meta don't try and pretend to care about your privacy.

 

[robvalentine]

Big statement. So very, very wrong.

Poorly worded i'll admit I should have said vast majority, but pretty much true. A simple google search will show you.

Most people however use whatsapp over SMS anyway as Android usage is higher, and why you wouldn't want to text friends without an iPhone is beyond me. SMS use in Europe is miniscule compared to whatsapp. 2FA excluded.

 

[robvalentine]

“Pretty much everyone.” No-one I know in Europe uses it. Not a huge sample, but as anecdotal as your assertion.

Do you know about usage in Japan? Or Australia?

I take it you don't know anyone in Europe then? or just people off this site? I'd lose contact with nearly all my friends if I gave up whatsapp.

People really need to stop making it out that iMessage is the default messaging app in Europe when it really isn't. Look out side your bubble.

 

[hagar]

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...

That’s because it’s a feature powered by Siri. She insists on being consistent and being useless on all fronts.

 

[hagar]

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

What does it matter? This feature is also supported by FB Messenger and WhatsApp

 

[svish]

Great article. Really useful tip.