Suppose you use WhatsApp a lot on your Android, and you’ve probably suffered from that irritating bug where some of your friends won’t appear on your WhatsApp contact list but are inside your phone’s address book.
If this happens, you can’t call or message people on WhatsApp. In this guide, we will go through some most common reasons why your contact is not showing on WhatsApp Android devices, and we will fix it.
Reasons Why A Contact Isn’t Showing in WhatsApp on Android
The reasons why contacts don’t sync properly with WhatsApp on your Android device can be many. Some of the most common reasons include:
- It’s not that WhatsApp doesn’t have permission to access your contacts — it just isn’t using that permission.
- The contacts are not saved in the original format.
- Power issues with your wallet and WhatsApp.
- It hasn’t been given a WhatsApp account.
- You are running on an outdated version of the WhatsApp app.
Tips to Fix Contacts not showing up on WhatsApp
After we find the root cause now we can fix the issue of contacts not showing in WhatsApp on your Android phone through the below given methods.
Method 1: Permission to Access Contacts from Grant
If you don’t have a space together, this is the first thing you should check and see if WhatsApp has permission to read your phone’s contacts. Here’s how you can enable contact access for WhatsApp:
- In your Android device’s Settings go.
- Tap on Apps & Notification.
- Tap on App Management.
- Open the app list find, and tap on WhatsApp.
- Tap on Permissions.
- Now, tap on Contacts.
- Select Allow.
With WhatsApp you will have to allow contact access when you give the contact access then it will sync your phone’s contact list and display the missing contacts.
Method 2: Refresh WhatsApp Contacts
Since your phone’s address book does have your missing contacts already, you can try to get your WhatsApp contact list to refresh to do a resync.
- Open WhatsApp my go to the Chats tab.
- Towards the bottom right corner, tap on the New Chat icon (it is usually a message icon).
- Go into the upper right corner, and tap on the three dots.
- Select Refresh from the menu.
WhatsApp will re-scan your phone’s contacts update your list in the app, and check to see if the missing ones show up.
Method 3: International format save contacts
Contacts are matched using full phone numbers including country code by WhatsApp. In case the ones who didn’t get the message were saved in your phone’s address book, make sure they are saved in the correct international format.
Let’s say you’ve got a contact with the number 123-456-7890 in the US, save it as +1 123-456-7890 (notice the country code is +1 for the US) in your contacts too.
Phone numbers with appropriate country codes may help in saving those contacts with proper country codes and WhatsApp recognizes and syncs them correctly.
Method 4: Check Contact Formatting
In addition to using the international format, get the phone numbers and names of the contact holders written correctly in your phone’s address book.
- Open the Contacts app.
- Tap on that missing contact.
- Tap on next it says to edit their details, but you need to choose two pencil icons.
- Make sure the name entered into the contact name fields matches the contact name.
- The phone number also should contain only numbers, spaces, and symbols.
- Save the changes.
Method 5: Clear WhatsApp Cache
When old cached data starts piling up in WhatsApp, sometimes there could be issues like missing the Contacts.
- Find your Settings on your device.
- Tap on Apps & notifications.
- Tap on App Management
- Open the app list and find and then tap on WhatsApp.
- Tap on Storage Usage.
- Tap on Clear Cache.
Method 6: Update WhatsApp
If you’re still using an old version of WhatsApp, you may face compatibility issues, syncing problems, or the app will crash outright. Ensure that you have the latest version of WhatsApp installed on your Android device:
- Now open the Google Play Store app.
- Type WhatsApp and search in the search bar.
- On tap is Update, if an update is available.
- Tap on update
Method 7: Uninstall and Reinstall again WhatsApp
- Open WhatsApp.
- Click on the three dots in the top right corner.
- Tap on Settings.
- Next, tap on Chats.
- Tap on Chat backup.
- In the case, that you need to manually back up your WhatsApp chats and media, tap Tap Back up to do so to Google Drive.
- After the backup is done, you want to go to your phone’s home screen or app drawer.
- Locate the WhatsApp icon tap it, and hold your finger on it so a menu shows up.
- Click to remove WhatsApp from your phone.
- In the Google Play store, search WhatsApp.
- Just tap Install to reinstall the newest version of WhatsApp.
- Your phone number will be verified on open WhatsApp.
- After being prompted to restore your chat history from a Google Drive backup, tap Restore on the next screen.
- Wait for restore to finish then tap Next.
- Hope your WhatsApp has been restored. Now check iff thee contact is visible.
