Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco smartphone owners often face a situation where the phone book is overflowing with hundreds of unnecessary entries, whether itβs old numbers, duplicates that appear after changing the device, or just spam calls that you choose to save so you never see again. The standard method of deleting one contact in such cases becomes a real test, taking hours of time.
Fortunately, the Android operating system in the MIUI shell and the new HyperOS provides powerful tools for batch processing. You don't need to be a technician to clean up your call list. In this article, we'll look at all the ways you can do things, from simple finger-stepping to using cloud services for global cleaning.
The right way to make contacts is not just for aesthetics, but also for the speed of the number search system. When the database is bloated, the phone can take longer to respond to queries or incorrectly display callers ID names. Let's figure out how to effectively clean the number storage.
Standard method of group removal in the Contacts app
The fastest way to get rid of unnecessary recordings is to use the built-in functionality of the Contacts app. The interface may vary slightly depending on the version of MIUI, but the logic of actions remains the same. First, you need to activate the selection mode, which is hidden in the normal browsing mode.
Open the app and find a menu button or three-dot icon. In some versions of the firmware, you just press and hold your finger on the first contact you want to remove, and then you'll see a toolbar with numbers on top that indicate the number of objects you've selected.
- π± Press and hold the first contact to enter the edit mode.
- β Check all other unnecessary entries in the list.
- ποΈ Click the Remove button (basket icon) in the bottom or top corner of the screen.
Once confirmed, the system will request final consent, which is protection against accidental loss of important data, and if you've allocated hundreds of numbers, the process can take a few seconds, because the SQLite database has to update the indexes.
β οΈ Note: When you delete contacts through a standard app, they can be irretrievably lost if you don't have Google account sync enabled.Always check backup status before mass cleaning.
The advantage of this method is that you don't need any additional apps or access to a computer, but if you have thousands of contacts, manually scrolling through the list becomes tedious, and then you should consider more advanced sorting options.
Using Google Contacts for Mass Cleanup
The most reliable and functional tool is the Google Contacts web interface, which is ideal if your numbers are synced to the cloud, and you can work with huge amounts of data on the computer's big screen using a keyboard and mouse, which greatly speeds up the process.
To start, go to contacts.google.com and log in to the same account that you use on your Xiaomi smartphone. The interface allows you to highlight contacts not only one by one, but also whole groups or ranges. For example, you can highlight the first contact, press the Shift key and click on the last one to select the entire group at once.
One of the most useful features is filtering, which allows you to sort contacts by frequency of use, date of addition, or email address, and it helps you quickly identify dead souls, numbers you haven't used in years.
- π Log in to your Google account via your browser on your PC or smartphone.
- π±οΈ Highlight contacts with clicks or use hotkeys for mass selection.
- π After removal on the site, changes will automatically affect the phone if there is Internet.
It is important to understand the difference between deleting from the phone book and completely erasing from the cloud. SIM-It's not going to be visible in the Google interface. SIM-Google Contacts will require you to import numbers to the cloud first.
π‘
Use the βCombine and Fixβ feature in Google Contacts to automatically find and collapse duplicates, leaving only one current entry with the full data set.
Working with duplicates and combining records
A common problem with Xiaomi users is the appearance of duplicate contacts. This happens when synchronized from different sources: WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, SIM-Maps and Gmail can create separate records for the same person, and as a result, when you call, the screen can show different names or photos.
Modern versions of HyperOS and MIUI 14 have a smart double detection algorithm, and the system itself offers to combine similar records, but for manual control, you can use the contact management function. In this section, you can find the item "Combine repetitive contacts".
The process of combining doesn't delete information, it reduces several cards into one, which solves the question of how to delete multiple contacts, turning them into one full record, and if you want to erase the extra one, then only one active profile will remain after the combination.
| Source of contact | Where it's stored | Difficulty in removal |
|---|---|---|
| Google Account | Cloud + Telephone | Low (synchronization) |
| SIM-map | Chip cards. | Medium (import required) |
| Phone memory | Local base. | Low (direct removal) |
| Messengers (Viber/WhatsApp) | Annexes + Contacts | High (need to be removed at source) |
Pay attention to the icons next to the contact names. They indicate the source of storage. If you see a Google icon, deletion will occur on all devices where you log in to that account. If the icon on the yellow SIM card, the changes will affect only the current physical media.
β οΈ Note: Messengers often restore remote contacts from their database. If you delete a number but it reappears, check the privacy settings in Viber or WhatsApp and disable synchronization with the phone book in the settings of the apps themselves.
βοΈ Checking before mass removal
Removing Contacts Through File Manager and Exporting
For advanced users who need to delete specific contact sets (e.g., all numbers with a specific city code), there is a method of working with files. You can export the entire phone book to a.vcf file, edit it on your computer and import it back.
This requires caution. A.vcf file is a text list where each contact is described by a set of tags. Opening it in a text editor (like Notepad++), you can use the Find and Replace function or sorting to remove entire blocks of text corresponding to unnecessary contacts.
Once edited, the file is imported back into the phone, the system will suggest replacing existing contacts or adding new ones, and when you choose a replacement, you are actually updating the database, deleting those records that are not in the new file.
This method is especially useful if standard means are glitchy or the phone book contains encoding errors that make some contacts impossible to delete in the usual way, but for the average user, this can seem difficult.
How to find a contact file for export?
Clearing contacts with SIM-map
Contacts stored on SIM-They have limitations on memory and name length, and they're often the ones that create confusion, and you can delete them massively through the settings of the contacts app itself, switching the display to only the one that you can use. SIM-map.
In the Contacts app, click on the three dots (menu) and select Settings or Display Contacts Β«SIM-Now, the list will only include the numbers that are physically on the chip. Use the group allocation method described above to delete them.
An alternative path is through Android system settings. Go to Settings β Annexes β Contacts β You can try to clear the cache here, but you have to be careful to delete the data. SIM-map: Settings β Passwords and security β Confidentiality β Special access β Access to contacts (the path may vary).
It is recommended not to keep contact with SIM-It's better to copy them to your Google account, and the map itself. SIM-This will make room for new records if you decide to move the SIM into a button phone or GPS-tracker.
- π² Switch the contact display only to SIM-map.
- βοΈ Select all available numbers and click delete.
- πΎ Import saved numbers to Google immediately so you donβt lose them forever.
Solving problems with undeletable contacts
Sometimes users are faced with a situation where contacts do not delete, freeze or reappear after a reboot, this can be caused by a sync error or blocking by a third-party application, in which case cleaning the data of the Contacts application itself helps.
Go to Settings β Apps β All Apps β Contacts. Select βCleanβ (not βDeleteβ but βCleanβ or βResetβ). This action will delete the local cache and temporary files, but should not affect contacts saved in the Google cloud.
If the problem is in a particular aggregator application (e.g., Xiaomiβs Contact Theme), try temporarily changing the standard call and contact app in your system settings.
Critical: If contacts keep coming back, check to see if your Google account is connected to an old phone or tablet that automatically restores deleted entries from its local memory when the Internet is up.
π‘
The most common reason for the βresurrectionβ of remote contacts is active synchronization with another device or messenger, which has its own rights to read and write a phone book.