iPhone favourites (contacts) not syncing

[7alligator7]

In my 2023 Model Y I was able to connect my iPhone 13 and contacts, favourites, etc. all synced. My wife was able to connect her iPhone and also could sync.

At some point about 4-5 updates ago I suddenly lost all my favourites. Contacts still seem to be there (although not all of them but I have a lot, a lot of duplicates, foreign letters (not emojis though), and is basically in a bit of a mess) and I can receive text messages and reply to them. Not having favourites is a pain to send SMS and quick dials.

My wife's phone still connects as normal and has favourites.

I have unpaired and repaired the phone. The sync contacts and phone favourites is checked in the phone Bluetooth menu. Have done soft reset, etc.

I was hoping the update that made it go bad (perhaps was interrupted) would reset with a subsequent update but it doesn't seem to have happened. I have gone to Tesla Service and they have been no help and suggest it is a phone issue, which it could be but how do I fix it.

I can't be the only one with this problem if it affects iPhones. Any ideas?

 

[EVRider-FL]

Check your iOS Settings for the Tesla app and if there’s anything there for Contacts. I don’t see anything there on my iPhone, but I might have a different iOS version. Also check the Bluetooth settings in the car and see if there’s anything there. You can try uninstalling and reinstalling the Tesla app. Also try rebooting the car if you haven’t already.

 

[AF172MY2023]

I too am having the same issue and raised it with Tesla. Their response was the following - which begs the question, how do you determine which contacts are saved as vCards? If we can get to that, and resolve it, by recreating the problematic contacts - then this could be the fix!

"We have investigated the issue your wife has in regards to syncing her contacts with your Tesla.

The issue is that some of her contacts are saved as Vcards (virtual contact file) and currently the car cannot identify them which prevents it from syncing contacts at all.

This issue is under investigation, in the meanwhile you can try and identify which contacts are saved as Vcards and remove them from her phone, this should solve this issue for now."

 

[7alligator7]

Im happy to say I have solved this issue. Telsa service could not resolve but did mention they sometimes see problems when there are special characters in the contacts (vCards I suppose). The way I fixed it was more trial-and-error. I tried to go through all my contacts to remove any non-english alphabet letters, hypens, etc. from names. I seriously doubt if I caught them all. I also deslected some contact groups on my iPhone as there will be many duplicates, conflicts, contacts with photos or images in the file, etc. Deleting all favourites on my iPhone and readding. Forgetting and reconnecting the bluetooth link. I could make the favourites appear and when I went back a step they would disappear. I was able to get to a point where i could get the favourites I wanted to appear and I am happy with that. Everything looks as it should now so I am happy. I noticed two things that I believe might be critical in this problem; 1. with the original issue i noticed the contacts list was not fully synced, contacts were in a strange order, definitely lots missing, the syncing seem to get so far and stop or get stuck. With the problem fixed the contacts list looks far more normal and complete. 2. I did have a favourite contact that did have a special character in it in terms of a colon ). It was after this was removed that I believe might have triggered the favourites to return but I cannot be sure. The strange this is that this favourite had been on my iPhone for a long time and i hadn't added it or changed it or done anything to it in that time. Therefore, if this is the issue the fact that this wasn't an issue before but became an issue after an update suggests a change, intentionally or not intentionally, was in that update which caused me problem. I cannot be sure about any of this as my methodology to fix it wasnt very scientific. My suggestion to anyone having the same problem, as i can't be the only one, is to spend 30 minutes in the car with your phone deselecting different contact groups, try to clean up your contacts, be extra watchful of ANY special characters in any of your phone favourites, and test the changes you make by forgetting and re-connecting the bluetooth connection each time. That way I think you will crack it.