Recovering 4000 contacts from a 30-day old iCloud backup on iPhone

Question

Level 1

11 points

Recovering 4000 contacts from a 30-day old iCloud backup on iPhone

After the most recent iOS update on my iPhone, I lost over 4000 contacts. I tried to restore via iCloud backup but they only go back 10 days which doesn't fix the issue. Im happy to restore to a 30 day old back up but don't know how to get there. Help??? My iCloud account uses a gmail address that has not changed in 15 yrs so it isn't about a mail account having been deleted

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Contacts disappeared

iPhone 15 Pro Max

Posted on Sep 10, 2025 11:34 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Alykaz

Level 1

12 points

Sep 11, 2025 9:44 AM in response to mshepardson

iCloud backups only keep data for 10 days, so you can’t restore from a 30-day-old backup that way. But you can try this instead: go to iCloud.com, log in, then go to Account Settings > Advanced > Restore Contacts. Apple saves contact archives for up to 30 days there, so you might find one from before you lost them. Restore it, and your contacts should sync back to your phone automatically. Just make sure Contacts syncing is turned on in your iPhone settings.

If you don’t see anything there, or it’s older than 30 days, you might have to look for other backups or synced accounts.

Reply