Contact transfer to car with bluetooth not working,

[Android Central Question]

Have a Samsung S9 and have been unable to move my contacts to a car by Bluetooth. The phone pairs to let me make a phone call or play audio in the car, but the only contact that transfers is myself. Never had this issue with a Samsung S7. It happens in a Toyota and a Honda. Tried to unpair and then redo the pairing, same result.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Go to Settings>Bluetooth, tap the gear icon next to the car system, and make sure Contact Sharing is turned on. If it already is, then try going to the Contacts app, tap Menu>Customize, and manually select which groups you want to display (rather than "All"). This was a quirk that I used to see on my old BMW.

 

[TommyC121]

Thank you for the reply. Under Settings>Connections>Bluetooth i clicked on the gear and saw that Contact access was allowed.

In the default Contacts apps I went to Menu>Share. Normally I would just want to share all, but I decided to manually check 5 test contacts. After selecting the names I clicked on the share in the upper right. When I check on Bluetooth I get to a screen with Bluetooth devices. If I try either car I get an outbound transfer error with a file called Contacts.vcf.

I may try to download the Google contacts app and see if that works.

 

[B. Diddy]

The Bluetooth Share option won't help in this situation. Is there no option to customize what contact groups are displayed in the Contacts app menu?

 

[TommyC121]

Thank you for your suggestion about creating a manual group, that seemed to work on 2 different cars. The steps were in the Contacts app under Settings>Contacts to Show>Custom List. I selected all contacts under both Phone and my Google account since I was not sure if that was an issue. I picked every available label in both Phone and Google, which included the choice All Other Contacts. There is probably some or maybe all duplicate contacts transferred from the phone to the car, but the phone's contacts are now in the car's address book. I guess the next test is to change or add a contact to the phone and reconnect the phone to the car to see if the new one is added.

 

[B. Diddy]

Great! It's a bit of an annoying bug -- it's worth giving feedback to Google about it from within the Contacts app's menu.