A good contact app can make managing contacts easy, efficient and even fun. If you are on the hunt for the best contact manager for Mac, check out this list of the best apps to manage contacts on Mac. I hope the list will help Mac users make better decisions when choosing contact management software.
Apple Contacts, or simply Contacts, comes with your Mac. It can help you manage and organize contacts. If it meets all your needs, then you can happily use it. If this native solution lacks the features that you are looking for, you may want to check out third party solutions. Below are some basic criteria in choosing the best contacts app for Mac. It should allow you to easily:
Compatibility: macOS 10.11 or later
Latest version: 6.8.1, released in April 2024
Price: $29.99 one-year subscription; $49.99 one-time purchase
Cisdem ContactsMate is a powerful, easy-to-use app to manage, organize and clean up contacts on MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, etc.
In addition to the local contacts on your Mac, it can handle your contacts from various other sources such as iCloud, Google, Exchange, Yahoo, etc. You can manage all your contacts in one place.
Let’s take a look at its great features.
In addition to the contacts stored in Mac's Contacts app, ContactsMate supports contacts kept in Internet accounts such as Gmail, iCloud and Exchange. With this Mac contact manager, you can effortlessly gather all your contacts to access and manage in one place.
Open the app. Click Add Account in the toolbar.
In the Internet Accounts window that appears, select a service. Sign in using your account.
Select the Contacts checkbox.
Click the refresh icon next to the "Updated contacts detected" message. Now the added account should appear in the left sidebar. When you select the account, the contacts in it will appear in the area next to the sidebar.
When you make changes (such as editing or deleting) to the account’s contacts in ContactsMate, the changes will be automatically detected and synced to the account, and vice versa.
The best contact manager for Mac lets you easily performs basic tasks. Click the blue add button at the bottom to add contacts. When adding a company as a contact, you can select the Company checkbox. Select a contact, and you can view or edit it as you wish. To add a field when editing, click the black add button in the bottom left corner of the editing area.
The search field is located at the bottom of the main window. And you can find the share icon in the bottom right corner. You can also find the Share, Print and other options by control-clicking a contact.
Well integrated with macOS, this app enables you to directly email, call or text a contact. Select the specific contact and click an icon below the name to text, call or email the contact. You can send group emails too.
You can add one or multiple tags to individual contacts to efficiently categorize and filter them. You can find a field to add tags when editing a contact.
If you often send emails to the same bunch of contacts, you can create a group for them. The next time you send an email, just control-click the group and choose Send Email.
To create a group or sub-group, in the left sidebar, control-click On My Mac or an Internet account and choose New Group.
To export contacts to a desired format, control-click On My Mac or an Internet account you have added to ContactsMate and choose Export.
In the dialog box that shows up, click the Format dropdown list and choose a format. It supports 8 export formats: CSV, Excel, vCard, TXT, DOCX, HTML, Numbers and Pages. Some services such as iCloud only support very few export formats. This Mac contact manager provides far more choices. It can import contacts from CSV and vCard files.
Backing up contacts is also a snap. Open the Preferences window.
Go to the Backup & Restore tab, select a contacts source (e.g. your Mac's Contacts or iCloud account) and click Backup. To restore, select a source, choose a version of backup and click Restore.
Having duplicate entries of the same contact may cause inconvenience or confusion. Some entries are exactly the same. There can also be partially duplicate entries. The best contact manager for Mac detects duplicate contacts and provides multiple solutions for you to deal with different types of duplicates. Here's the detailed guide on it if you are interested.
Also, it can identify contacts with incomplete or invalid information.
Get ContactsMate to keep your contacts well organized and clean on Mac!
Compatibility: macOS 11.0 or later
Latest version: 2024.3.1, released in September 2024
Price: $49.99
BusyContacts is another one of the best contact app for Mac. Many people use it as a replacement for the built-in address book. It's more feature-rich compared to Cisdem ContactsMate, which may make it a bit confusing for some non-tech-savvy users to use.
There are two ways you can view your contacts in this app: the List view and the Card view. The Card view is more intuitive. Let you quickly view all information including name, addresses, birthdays, activity, etc. of a single contact. The List view is more convenient when you want to browse multiple contacts at once and quickly filter, sort, or search for contacts.
This contact manager allows you to use tags to organize contacts. The great thing is that you can add a tag color, such as purple for the Coworker tag and Green for the Family tag.
It can work with contacts from iCloud, Google and some other accounts. The syncing speed is decent if even you have added multiple accounts. The added accounts will appear in the panel on the left.
BusyContacts also has something unique to it. It is designed to integrated with BusyCal, a calendar app from the same developer. The integration makes it easy to follow up events in this address book app.
Compatibility: All macOS versions
Price: $119.88/year, or $13.99/month
Used to be available as a desktop app, Contacts+ is now a web-based app. If you are not a fan of web-based apps, you can skip this one.
Contacts+ allows you to import contacts from Google, iCloud, Outlook, CSV files and vCard files. If you want to use it to manage the contacts that are currently in the Contacts app on your Mac, you need to sync your Mac contacts with iCloud, or export all the contacts to a vCard file first then import them to Contacts+. This contact app can also connect to user's social media accounts, such as Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
By default, after the import is complete, Contacts+ will automatically start looking for and merging duplicate contacts. The deduplication is completely automatic. If you don’t trust it that much, it’s recommended to go to the settings to turn this feature off.
Now you can easily search, view and edit contacts. You can also create new contacts. The Birthdays section informs you of the upcoming birthdays. The Duplicates section displays the duplicate contact that Contacts+ has automatically found, and you can review them and then deal with them. This is more reliable than the automatic deduplication. Despite being web-based, Contacts+ allows you to directly email a contact using the Mail app on Mac. It can also show a contact’s address on Google Map.
This Mac contact manager is highly rated for being easy to use. It also offers a set of features that is enough for average users. It’s free to use with limits. To access full features, you need to get Contacts+ premium.
Compatibility: macOS 11 or later
Latest version: 2.3.1, released in September 2024
Price: $4.75/month
Cardhop is worth considering if you are looking for an app to do basic contact management tasks such as searching, editing, adding and using contacts. But it’s not your average contacts app. With it, you can actually handle your contacts on Mac in a fun way.
There are a few ways to add new contacts. You can do it by going to the settings and choosing New Card. Or, you can directly input the new contact’s information in the search bar, and this great contact manager for Mac is smart enough to automatically creating a new card. Don’t forget to click the Add Contact button to save the new card.
You can even edit an existing contact by specifying the name and entering new information in the search bar. Cardhop will automatically parse and recognize the information you enter.
Here is another way to create a new contact. Select text containing contact information from anywhere on your Mac such as a webpage, control-click and choose Send to Cardhop. Cardhop will immediately create a new contact according to the selected text, and then you can change or enrich the card.
If you are a fan of shortcuts, you will love the way Cardhop allows you to use contact information.
The biggest highlight of Cardhop is its natural language parsing function. Users can directly enter commands using natural language, such as "call Rosa" or "send an email to Rosa". The contact app will automatically perform the corresponding actions, reducing the need to switch between different menus.
Cardhop makes contact management less boring. But it lacks some contact management features that you may need, like a backup feature and a cleanup feature. You can manually backup your contacts by exporting them to a vCard file though.
Compatibility: macOS 10.12 or later
Latest version: 1.3.3, released in September 2019
A relatively old app, Top Contacts does a decent job of managing contacts on Mac. Users can easily add, delete, view and edit contacts. It offers useful features such as Tags and Add Relations, making it more efficient to navigate and organize. This contact app supports creating custom fields, which is suitable for users who need to store personalized information such as customer purchase history, hobbies, needs, etc. Also you can delete unnecessary fields to make your contacts cards concise and clear. When it comes to searching, you can set up custom filters to quickly locate contacts. It's also quick and easy to share and print contacts.
The Calendar and To-Do features are available for all contacts, enabling you to create reminders for events and follow them up. One of the great things is the support for recurring events. In addition, it allows you to attach documents and other files such as contracts and agreement to any of your contacts. You can preview attached files in this tool directly. These features are worth exploring and can help you improve efficiency greatly.
The app is almost as versatile as the best contact manager for Mac. But currently, it only supports syncing contacts with iCloud. No other services are supported.
The article recommends and reviews the best macOS apps to manage contacts, which can help you choose the best contact manager for Mac. Compared to the built-in Contacts app on Mac, these apps offer more advanced contact management functions and richer options. Keeping your contacts list clean, organized and well maintained can make things easier and improve efficiency. They are great for individuals and small businesses to use.
With a passion for tech and writing, Sarah joined Cisdem, where she focuses on creating articles about using utility tools to enhance file management and simplify contact management.
Gary R.
I tried some of the apps mentioned in your article. I pick ContactsMate. It's very easy to use and has some features that the Contacts app lacks.
Brendon
Wow, great blog post.Really looking forward to read more. Really Great.
Peter
Hi I am wanting to clean up my Linkedin contacts and I have a MAc. Have you come across anything that makes this process easier ?
Herve Da Costa
Love your article. Very useful. Keep up the good work.
fddd1
Well. Megan, do these software you mentioned support for el capitan?
Megan Charles
Yes. All these three software mentioned here are compatible with El Capitan
Jefferis Peterson
Since Contacts now syncs in iCloud with all devices, what is the procedure for cleaning Contacts on one Mac and having it update on iCloud for all devices?
Megan Charles
You can search "clean contacts " in the search bar in our website and find tips about cleaning contacts. As for updating contacts on Mac, you can see the guide from Apple Support by searching "Get help using iCloud Contacts". Hope it's useful to you, Jefferris.
Ronald
Very detailed. Cisdem Contacts Manager for Mac is useful. Its features is very comprehensive and it also is easy-to-use.
Shondak8
I read the whole article, thank you writer for providing so detailed information for us. I will try Cisdem Contacts Manager for Mac since it seems more effective.