Tip: Turning off NFC contact swapping if you've two or more iPhones

[woolypants]

So I have a work iPhone. And I have a personal iPhone. They use two different iCloud accounts because the work phone is from my employer.

If I hold the two phones together in my hand, or if I put them in the same pocket. I get prompts to attempt to swap contact details (that is, the tap to share contact feature). Every single time. No matter what I do (e.g. accept, refuse etc).

I was actually going to post here asking for a solution, but I figured it out... I think. Just link the two primary contacts on each phone. This can be done by opening your main personal contact on one of them, and then editing it, and then scrolling down to the link option. Then link it to the main contact for the other phone.

Seems to be working for me so far... Fingers crossed. I like this feature very much. But I'm a little astounded that Apple engineers didn't work in a system that realised it didn't need to attempt to do it if the contact had already been shared.

 

[msackey]

This can be done by opening your main personal contact on one of them, and then editing it, and then scrolling down to the link option. Then link it to the main contact for the other phone.

Wow! I'm blown away. I didn't even know that function existed! What is the Link option in the card typically used for? I don't have that problem you're experiencing because I only have one iPhone.

 

[woolypants]

Link contacts in Contacts on Mac

In Contacts on your Mac, you can link contact cards from different accounts, so you only see one card for each contact.

support.apple.com

Seems to be for situations perhaps just like this, where one person has multiple contact cards, perhaps because one is for their work, one is for their home account, and so forth (maybe others for social activities or voluntary work they do).

I suppose in the ideal world in which Apple's engineers roam, a single person's contact cards are always linked in this way — so the problem I explained shouldn't raise its head.

 

[msackey]

Interesting. I know this as Merge contacts rather than Link contacts. I thought Merging them basically merges all information into one card rather than keeping separate cards still in tact.