Sync two Gmail accounts, but only one account's contacts

Question

I have a brand-new Moto X (2014) running Lollipop. I have two Gmail accounts: me@gmail and work@gmail. While I would like to be able to check both accounts for new messages on my phone, I only want my me@gmail contacts to sync to my phone; not the work@gmail contacts, as some are sensitive and my employer would take issue with them being available on my personal phone.

Short of manually deleting those contacts one by one (and there are several hundred), is there another solution?

Answer 1

Open the Settings of your Android phone, then navigate to Accounts -> Google -> Select Account (whose contacts you want to sync) -> Select Applications which you want to Sync (Contacts)

Answer 2

Go to Gmail -> click Settings -> click on the account which you don't want to sync in contacts and WhatsApp -> click on the right menu icon ([email protected]) -> select Manage Accounts -> on Auto Sync, deselect the icon.

Now go to your contacts and check. It worked for me.

Answer 3

With Android 7, in addition to Dipika's helpful suggestion, I had previously configured a second account and found it useful to delete Contacts application data to reset the default account:

Go to Settings -> Apps -> Contacts -> Storage and press the "Clear Data" button.

Then when you next add a new contact, you should be prompted for which account you want to be the default. Select the account that you have configured to sync.

Answer 4

Disable syncing in Android 13:

In a stock Android 13 installation, this is what worked for me:

1. Open the Settings section of the phone
2. Navigate to "Passwords and accounts"
3. Scroll to find the Google account that you wish to select, and select it
4. Click on "Account sync"
5. Disable the "Contacts" sync for that account

Now open your Google Contacts app. Even though you disabled sync for a particular Google account, that only disable automatic online syncing. To sync manually, pull down, and a refresh animation will display.

Hide contacts from certain accounts in Google Contacts on Android:

If you don't want contacts from a certain Google account to display in Google Contacts app by default when opened, you can either delete the account from your phone, or you can hide those contacts.

By default, when you open the app, Google will display contacts from all accounts, as well as contacts that are only stored on device. You can see at the top of the screen under the search bar the text "All accounts - 301 contacts".

To only see contacts for a particular Google account, do this:

1. Click the user profile photo (or icon of a device) at the top of the screen next to the search bar
2. Select the Google account you choose
3. Even though you have selected a Google account, you are still seeing all contacts from all accounts and from the device itself. To see only the contacts for that Google account, select the menu button at the top of the screen, then select the Google account.

To see only contacts stored on the device, do this:

1. Click the user profile photo at the top of the screen next to the search bar (or icon of a phone)
2. Select "Device"
3. Now you can see only contacts stored on the device (as opposed to in a Google account)

When searching, Google Contacts will search across all accounts and on the device itself. I don't know a way to change this behaviour.