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Whatsapp is creating duplicate contacts on my Android phone. I know that the duplicates belong to Whatsapp because:

  1. I have checked the Android contacts storage database, which confirms the duplicates come from Whatsapp and
  2. By going to Settings > Users & accounts and deleting WhatsApp, all of these duplicate contacts are gone. They re-appear when I restart WhatsApp.

The prevailing wisdom (e.g. this answer) is that to rectify this issue just go to the contacts app, click on the three dots, select "Contacts to Display", and deselect Whatsapp. However, when I do this, I select "Customised view", but Whatsapp does not appear in the list of accounts which I can show or hide.

Is there any other way to hide Whatsapp's contact list from within the default Android contacts app?

Things I would rather avoid:

  1. Revoking contacts permissions for Whatsapp. If I do that, I won't be able to see the names of contacts any more from inside Whatsapp.
  2. Using a different contacts app. This is just avoiding the issue, rather than trying to fix it.

The phone is a Xiaomi Mi A1, and the OS is Android One, version 8.0.

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  • In your contacts app settings go to 'contacts to display' and press on 'customized view'. Now you should able to select which ones to display and which ones not to. Let me know if that's how it is in your phone, and I'll post as an answer. – aBochur Apr 17 '18 at 15:04
  • Thanks for the suggestion. I already tried that, but Whatsapp doesn't appear in the list. I edited the answer to make this clear. – Kit Johnson Apr 18 '18 at 5:42
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Using Samsung S9:

  • Whatsapp does show in "custom group" list of available contact lists on my phone
  • Doing that has not effect on the Phone App contact list though (still showing all contacts available on the phone including whatsapp).

so the question remains: How to define the address book to be used by the phone app?

Note: I don't want to merge duplicates becasue that comes with a whole host of new issues like intetional duplicates being merged etc..

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  • Hi Tom, welcome to Stack Exchange! What you've posted here is not an answer to the question. If you have a comment on the original quesiton, you need to add a comment. If you have a new question, new need to ask a new question. But in neither case should you add an answer. – Kit Johnson Sep 21 '20 at 1:22

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