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Apple quietly doubles total iCloud contact card limit

In a recent change to its iCloud syncing service, Apple has raised the total number of contacts it will store and sync across your devices before hitting the maximum allowed. Previously iCloud enforced a hard limit of syncing 25,000 contacts, but an updated support document (via iFun.de) highlights that limit doubling now to a total of 50,000 contacts…
Apple states that exceeding the limit may cause iCloud to experience “issues keeping changes up to date across your devices,” advising that users stay within the doubled contacts limit as well as other limits for calendars, reminders, and Safari bookmarks.

The syncing limits for calendars, reminders, and bookmarks remain unchanged. Apple currently allows up to 25,000 calendars, events, and reminder entries, 100 calendar and reminder lists, 50,000 vCards in your address book, and 25,000 bookmarks before syncing issues begin directly related to these caps.

These types of data are stored and kept up-to-date across iOS devices, Macs, and the web at no cost to iCloud users and without hitting the free 5GB of storage free accounts include.

Apple did introduce iCloud storage upgrades last year at WWDC with the higher capacity tiers rolling out last September alongside iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite. Paid plans now range from 20GB to 1TB for up to $20/month. As part of Apple’s push of iWork on iCloud.com, Apple also recently introduced free 1GB iCloud accounts for users without Apple products.

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Comments

  1. friarnurgle - 9 years ago

    Wow, thanks.

  2. Zac Hall - 9 years ago

    Also, I have 343 contacts. Still safe.

    • Zac Hall - 9 years ago

      Amazing what Apple can do with all that cash!

  3. gjconstructs - 9 years ago

    Must be an exceeding slow news day.

  4. Jonny - 9 years ago

    Now let’s double that iTunes Match limit…

    • galley99 - 9 years ago

      I would need it quadrupled. I think I’m past the 75,000 track mark.

      • Tuvatech - 9 years ago

        I’m just curious – how on Earth can you use your library with 75,000 tracks? A few years ago I had something like 15,000 songs and it was a nightmare. They were all organized well and everything, but the Music app was quite honestly pointless. You couldn’t use the ”Artists” or ”Songs” or ”Albums” sections at all. Even if you went directly to the letter of M or whatever, there were still way too many tracks to scroll. The only option was to type in the exact title of the song. But that was too inconvenient and took so much time. And the app was often slow because of all this loading/searching.

        So the only way to use Music was to create playlists. But that takes a lot of time too. Sometimes I get tired of some songs, so I remove them from the list. And then I’d like to add something new that I haven’t listened for a while. But the thing is.. I didn’t know all the songs from heart. I had to browse my library and see what awesome songs I had forgotten. How on Earth could you browse a library of 75,000? I mean it would be horrible even on iTunes.

        Not judging or anything. I’m seriously interested in how you are managing this. What I ended up doing was that I deleted a lot of the songs that I hardly ever listened to. I had many complete albums, although I really liked that one song. So I never listened to the other songs. I decided to only keep the songs that I really love and will actually listen to. The 007 tune might be fun, but I just can’t imagine myself ever actually listening to it. It’s the same story with many songs. They are great pieces of art, but I never actually listen to them. So why bother keeping them? For some imaginary future where I have absolutely nothing else to do to listen to my music? :)

        Cheers bro! :)

  5. shareef777 - 9 years ago

    Wow, thank you sooooo much Apple /s.

    Let me know when they actually double something meaningful, like the actual space assigned. 5GB is laughable when they want everyone to own a Mac, iPhone, iPad, and now watch. What’re you going to do with 5GB between all your devices? You couldn’t even complete a proper backup with just two items.

    • To be fair, 10GB is laughable too. They need to start off with something that’s truly useful, like unlimited photo storage, period, full stop.

      • PhilBoogie - 9 years ago

        They already have unlimited photo storage.

      • Tuvatech - 9 years ago

        Agreed! I’ve had this idea for quite a while now – Apple should give you as much free storage as you have on your Apple device. If you buy a brand new 64GB iPhone, you will get 64GB for free. And even if you re-sell the phone, you will keep it forever. Only the first buyer gets it. Now if you go ahead and buy a 512GB MacBook, you will get an additional 512GB of space. The more devices you buy, the more space you get.

        It’s not that expensive to service. The price of storage is constantly falling. I remember days when 16 MB was A LOT of space. Heck, I still have bunch of floppy disks laying around. They were what.. 1.44 MB? Back then it costed quite a bit to have 16MB of storage, but now it’s nothing. In a matter of years 1 TB will be nothing. So it wouldn’t be too expensive to service it. But it would be one helluva edge over competition. Can you imagine this?

        I don’t know what those guys do who are only buying second-hand devices. Maybe Apple should start selling online storage in a more affordable price. So those guys can either rent or pay a one time fee for whatever amount they want. I don’t know. The cost of storage is nothing these days. Apple should just create a huuuuge storage facility to keep the price really down.

        And on that note, another thing they could do is to allow users to park their domain on iCloud Drive. You know, you buy your own domain name and then you have to pay for the virtual server. That’s many times more expensive than the domain name itself. I may be wrong here (I’m not that tech guy), but couldn’t you technically park your website on any server or cloud-based storage? Do you guys understand where I’m going with this? That would kill an entire industry and potentially bring a lot of new folks to Apple. :)

  6. chrisl84 - 9 years ago

    But don’t dare ask for more than 5GB of free storage across all your dang devices.

  7. Gazoo Bee - 9 years ago

    Double the storage and someone might give a shit.

  8. guacho8 - 9 years ago

    Phewww… I was at 24.999 but this made my day. =)

  9. calisurfboy - 9 years ago

    Sorry but storage needs to either be quadrupled or have 5 gig PER DEVICE, not account.

    • PhilBoogie - 9 years ago

      And just how would Apple decide which files to delete when you break or sell your device? You really need to think before making a request. Because here you haven’t given any thought to the ramifications this will have.

      • Mike Gates (@cmkrnl) - 9 years ago

        Someone spoke to this in a comment above – storage is only given to the original purchaser. That’s one way to do it

  10. mightyjabba - 9 years ago

    Who on earth has tens of thousands of contacts?

  11. Eric Dickson - 9 years ago

    Who the hell has 25,000 contacts, let alone 50,000?

    • calisurfboy - 9 years ago

      The same people walking around with $17,000 Apple Watches weeks before they were released to the general public.

  12. yuniverse7 - 9 years ago

    I was excited until ‘contacts’. I thought they were doubling the iCloud storage. Even if it was 10GB, they are already behind others.

  13. kmehx - 9 years ago

    Good post 👍👍

  14. alfonsico75 - 9 years ago

    I would like, as they are thinking in business use, be able to rearrange contact with Company field and not only with name and surname as we were teenagers

  15. Great…. you can have more than 25,000 contacts now. But what I want to know is did they fix the issue that doesn’t allow more than 1,000 documents in the iWork beta apps?

  16. PMZanetti - 9 years ago

    Lets hope iTiunes Match is next for the same treatment. 25k -> 50k please

  17. Gregory Wright - 9 years ago

    Well, I have 224 contacts. Does anybody know if I can bring my Mac and iPhone to Heaven? I won’t live long enough to accumulate 50,000 contacts here on earth.

  18. SKR Imaging - 9 years ago

    Great.. Now, if Apple could “unquietly” upgrade free iCloud Storage to at least 50gb, that would be News.. Box and Microsoft are giving 50GB or more for free to all users.. Mega Cloud gives you 50GB.. Apple has all that server stash and is holding out with cloud storage..

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.