How to Turn Off Siri's Contact Suggestions in Share Sheet on iPhone

With the release of iOS 13, Apple introduced Siri’s contact suggestions to the iPhone. Open the share sheet in an app. You would automatically see recent contacts from apps like Messages and Whatsapp listed at the top. To add to that, it even listed the devices you shared photos or documents on using AirDrop. Some loved it because it obviously speeds up content sharing. A few people hated it. This adds extra clutter to an otherwise cluttered Share Sheet and increases the chances of accidentally choosing a Contact.

If you’ve fallen into the latter camp, however, you’re finally in luck. While iOS 13 offered no way to turn off Siri’s contact suggestions (other than a bit of a crazy workaround which we’ll also be talking about), Apple included an option with iOS 14 that can let you turn them off easily. . So, without further ado, let’s see how you can turn off Siri’s Share Sheet contact suggestions on your iPhone.

Completely turn off share sheet suggestions

Before we begin, we assume that you have upgraded your iPhone to OS 14 or higher. Otherwise, you can’t turn off Siri Share Sheet contact suggestions on your iPhone. There is a workaround that applies to both iOS 13 and iOS 14 which can remove contact suggestions one by one. Still, the following method is much more convenient if you want to quickly get rid of all the share sheet contact suggestions.

Step 1: Open the Settings app.

2nd step: Scroll down and tap Siri and search.

Step 3: Under the Siri Suggestions section, turn off the switch next to Suggestions when sharing.

That’s it. You will no longer see the Share Sheet contact suggestions in any app on your iPhone. If you miss them later, repeat the above steps and turn on the switch next to Suggestions when sharing.

Again, if you don’t see this option, you need to update your iPhone to iOS 14. To do this, go to Settings> General> Software Update. Then tap on Download and Install. All devices running iOS 13 support iOS 14, so you should have no issues upgrading. iOS 14 also comes with a slew of great features like Home screen widgets, Picture-in-Picture support, an app library, among dozens of other features. So, you have plenty of reasons to upgrade.

Disable individual share sheet suggestions

Rather than removing all contact suggestions from the share sheet, you can also remove contacts individually. To do this, you need to delete the conversation thread for the contact you want to get rid of. For example, suppose you want to remove a contact from the share sheet just because you had a conversation with them in the Messages app. Deleting the entire conversation will remove the contact suggestion from the share sheet.

However, this means that you will lose all the photos and attachments related to the conversation. So, only do this if it is absolutely necessary.

Note: You may want to save important attachments before deleting a conversation thread.

In the Messages app, for example, you can delete a conversation by swiping it to the right and tapping the Delete icon. On Whatsapp, swipe right, tap More, and then tap Delete chat.

You can use it to get rid of the weird contact suggestion that you don’t want to show in the share sheet. But, if you delete all the conversation threads, you will end up deleting the entire share sheet suggestion strip. Since this also applies to iOS 13, consider this an unwieldy workaround that you can use if you don’t want to upgrade to iOS 14.

If you have AirDrop contacts in the share sheet, you cannot get rid of them individually. The only way to delete AirDrop contacts is to turn off AirDrop itself. Obviously, that would mean that you won’t be able to send or receive anything through AirDrop. If you want to continue, start by opening the Settings app. Next, tap Screen Time> Content & Privacy Restrictions> Allowed Apps and turn off the switch next to AirDrop.

Note: If you’ve never used Screen Time before, you’ll need to go through several startup screens to set it up.

Start sharing

This is how you should turn off share sheet contact suggestions. iOS 14 made this ridiculously easy. But again, remember that you can also get rid of unwanted suggestions individually while enjoying the functionality.