{"id":50133,"date":"2025-11-21T15:13:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T20:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=50133"},"modified":"2026-04-27T11:43:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T15:43:51","slug":"contacts-in-tahoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/21\/contacts-in-tahoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Contacts in Tahoe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/mpweiher\/status\/1991793800960966910\">Marcel Weiher<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/x.com\/mpweiher\/status\/1991793800960966910\"><p>So Tahoe apparently has a new Contacts app.<\/p><p>Unusably slow.<\/p><p>So slow that you think it has crashed.<\/p><p>Why am I not surprised that <code>otool -L<\/code>  shows a SwiftUI dependency?<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Oh, and it flickers and has visual glitches.<\/p><p>Not just when scrolling, also when just sitting there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It really is incredibly slow, especially resizing the window, even on an Apple Silicon Mac. And, yes, the pane that shows the contact details has a distracting gray gradient that takes a split second to flash into place each time you click on a contact and then proceeds to sit there flickering.<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The information density is way down. Each contact in the list takes three times as much vertical space because it now shows a photo. There doesn&rsquo;t seem to be a way to turn this off, even though most of my contacts don&rsquo;t have photos.<\/p><\/li>\n\n<li><p>The details pane wastes a huge amount of space at the top for a giant photo (again, usually blank) and giant text for the name. Then it puts a thick bar on every contact, prompting you to edit the photo and poster. I have to make the window huge to see all the details. With my 14-inch MacBook Pro&rsquo;s display at the highest resolution and the Contacts window maximized, the actual contact info (e.g. the first phone number) doesn&rsquo;t get displayed until well below the top half of the screen. It also has messed up horizontal margins, like the <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@mjtsai\/115582618117956334\">Weather app<\/a>.<\/p><\/li>\n\n<li><p>Navigation in the list is all messed up. The arrow keys (and Shift arrow keys) sometimes stop working. Trackpad scrolling sometimes gets stuck. Page Up\/Down and Home\/End don&rsquo;t work at all.<\/p><\/li>\n\n<li><p>I selected 3 contacts at once and deleted them, and it beachballed for 10 seconds.<\/p><\/li>\n\n<li><p>The Smart List editor doesn&rsquo;t seem to have been tested since adopting Liquid Glass. The buttons literally overlap, and you can&rsquo;t prevent this by making it wider.<\/p><\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>See also: the <a href=\"https:\/\/forums.macrumors.com\/threads\/contacts-app-is-a-nightmare-on-tahoe.2465399\/\">MacRumors forum<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/16\/shipping-liquid-glass\/\">Shipping Liquid Glass<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/18\/macos-tahoe-26-developer-beta-7\/\">macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 7<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/18\/ios-16-5-and-ipados-16-5\/\">iOS 16.5 and iPadOS 16.5<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/20\/contacts-app-skipping-export-of-some-contacts\/\">Contacts.app Skipping Export of Some Contacts<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/18\/cardhop-1-0\/\">Cardhop 1.0<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/28\/busycontacts-1-0\/\">BusyContacts 1.0<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-01-14\">Update (<a href=\"#contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-01-14\">2026-01-14<\/a>): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davedelong\/115888725619549868\">Dave DeLong<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-01-15\">Update (<a href=\"#contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-01-15\">2026-01-15<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.ie\/@baoigheallain\/115897725851774403\">Michael<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.ie\/@baoigheallain\/115897725851774403\">\n<p>It&rsquo;s the not scrolling which kills me. Sometimes I&rsquo;ve had to switch to Edit mode to scroll to the info I need.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-18\">Update (<a href=\"#contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-18\">2026-03-18<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@helge\/116195849196047841\">Helge He&szlig;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@helge\/116195849196047841\">\n<p>I&rsquo;m kinda OK w\/ Tahoe overall, but the Contacts.app card view is just a bad joke. Usability and more importantly performance wise. It takes like a second to fully render the basic card. And that flicker when it tries to come up w\/ a background. It&rsquo;s not cached either, you get it every time you switch contacts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-20\">Update (<a href=\"#contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-20\">2026-03-20<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/talk.macpowerusers.com\/t\/apple-contacts-is-terrible-are-there-better-options-for-mac-ios\/44727\">Bmosbacker<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/talk.macpowerusers.com\/t\/apple-contacts-is-terrible-are-there-better-options-for-mac-ios\/44727\">\n<p>I had the unenviable task of cleaning up and reorganizing my contacts in the Contacts app. What a terrible app! I will not go into the gory details. Suffice it to say that what should have been a simple drag and drop required exporting, importing, and drag and drop.<\/p>\n<p>Does anyone know of a good contacts app for Mac and iOS that is native, syncs flawlessly and quickly, supports groups and smart lists, and works with Apple Mail for adding contact information from a message? I prefer a one-time purchase.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@gummibando\/116261963310633625\">Oliver Busch<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@gummibando\/116261963310633625\">\n<p>The majority of the contact info area is a massive image.\nSidebar text is arbitrarily truncated.\nSidebar is not resizable (yet the respective control is shown).\nStil unfixed problems with importing a contacts backup.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-30\">Update (<a href=\"#contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-03-30\">2026-03-30<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@marioguzman\/116310429032809231\">Mario Guzm&aacute;n<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@marioguzman\/116310429032809231\">\n<p>Address Book in Mac OS X Leopard &amp; Snow Leopard was probably peak in the &ldquo;Design is how it works&rdquo; part of that quote.<\/p>\n<p>Notice how the + symbol is in the bottom bar, corresponding to each column. There is no confusion where a new &ldquo;item&rdquo; (whatever &ldquo;item&rdquo; may be), will appear.<\/p>\n<p>Today, if you look at Notes, the + is above the editor\/note view -- and not over the list of notes column (where it actually appears).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-04-27\">Update (<a href=\"#contacts-in-tahoe-update-2026-04-27\">2026-04-27<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@marioguzman\/116435110967986144\">Mario Guzm&aacute;n<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@marioguzman\/116435110967986144\">\n<p>You can no longer change widths between your contacts list &amp; the contact details view.<\/p>\n<p>Second, creating a new contact glitches out resulting in data loss. Here&rsquo;s a\nvideo of me trying to make a new contact TWICE; both times losing my data.\nIt also flickers A LOT.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marcel Weiher: So Tahoe apparently has a new Contacts app.Unusably slow.So slow that you think it has crashed.Why am I not surprised that otool -L shows a SwiftUI dependency?[&#8230;]Oh, and it flickers and has visual glitches.Not just when scrolling, also when just sitting there. It really is incredibly slow, especially resizing the window, even on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-11-21T20:13:06Z","apple_news_api_id":"dfc4d9e2-8c99-4bcd-9547-9594ef4f66ca","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-04-27T15:43:55Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A38TZ4oyZS82VR5WU709myg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[176,1016,77,2785,30,2742,1816,2074,1812],"class_list":["post-50133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-contacts","tag-datacide","tag-design","tag-liquid-glass","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-music-app","tag-software-rewrite","tag-swiftui"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50133"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51722,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50133\/revisions\/51722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}