Every once in a while, Apple foists upon its users another new feature that, in corporate marketing-speak, is invariably described as „beautiful“.
In iOS 17, one such feature that nobody asked for was the Contact Poster.
Back then, Apple wanted us to know that:
„The Phone app is central to the iPhone experience, and it receives a big update with personalized Contact Posters, providing a new way for users to express themselves. Users can customize how they appear, bringing a completely new look to incoming calls, and choose beautiful treatments for photos or Memoji, as well as eye-catching typography and font colors“.
Unfortunately, nobody asked me if I wanted to „express myself“, and if so, how exactly I wanted to do that. Instead, I was forced to express myself in the only corporate-approved way, with no real possibility to opt out.
I imagine there are plenty of people who will find Contact Posters useful, but I am not one of them. I find them garish and distracting. I prefer the old-school contact picture, which Apple recently started calling an „Avatar“. Unfortunately, I’m now stuck with yet another feature that I dislike and cannot (easily) turn off.
That said, there is still one convoluted way to remove unwanted Contact Posters. As so often, it involves a Mac.
Steps:
- You need a Mac. Open the Contacts app on your Mac.
- Select the contact card.
-
Export the .vcf file to disk. Use the menu
File -> Export -> Export vCard… - Delete the contact card.
- Wait for iCloud to sync the deletion. Check on you iPhone that the card was indeed deleted.
- Import the .vcf file back into Contacts.
- Poster will be gone, but the image of the person will stay.