How to unsync contacts from a phone?

[Android Central Question]

Hi guys, so I recently added my gmail account on my girlfriend's phone in order to play Pokemon Go on her phone. This synced all my contacts onto her phone, which I should have thought of before. Is there any way to add my account there without syncing all the contacts, or alternatively, since I only need to do it every once in a while and for a short while, is there a way to add my account, deleting it when I'm done and then somehow unsync the contacts? because I removed my account from her phone, but all the contacts are still there. Thanks in in advance.

 

[Mooncatt]

I've been through that before, but any time I remove my account, the contacts are removed as well. In either case, after following theses steps, at least it'll only be a one time action to go through and manually delete them if needed. Follow these steps exactly in order to prevent accidentally re-syncing contacts.

Step 1: Delete your Google account from her phone. If needed, also manually delete any leftover contacts.

Step 2: Go into your phone's settings, then to accounts, then turn off the option to auto-sync data.

Step 3: Re-add your Google account. With auto-sync off, this should prevent your contacts from being added. Verify this is so.

Step 4: Turn on Airplane Mode so there is no internet access.

Step 5: Go back into the account settings (from step 2) and turn auto-sync on. Being in airplane mode prevents it from being able to sync.

Step 6: With auto-sync on, you should now be able to go into your specific account and have access to the individual sync options. Turn off the option to sync contacts. If auto-sync is off, these options are not available.

Step 7: Turn off airplane mode to give you interest access and verify contacts are not synced.

If the contacts are not deleting when removing your account and you have to delete them one by one anyway, you can jump to step 6 and turn off contact sync, then go back and delete the contacts manually.

 

[gaaah]

Using Mooncat's solution worked. However this only helps the un-syncing part. You can risk syncing again when you accidentally do a 'pull and refresh'. And your account is still connected with the Google Contacts app as seen with the hamburger sliding menu or when adding a contact.

And so before doing the aforementioned solution I went to Apps > Google Play services and remove the 'Contacts' permission. Then Mooncat's. That's it. When you see your hamburger sliding menu in the Contacts app showing the 'Sign in' button, then it's a success O.

PS - Leave the auto-sync option on, or else the un-syncing of contacts will not work!

 

[Mooncatt]

Using Mooncat's solution worked. However this only helps the un-syncing part. You can risk syncing again when you accidentally do a 'pull and refresh'. And your account is still connected with the Google Contacts app as seen with the hamburger sliding menu or when adding a contact.

And so before doing the aforementioned solution I went to Apps > Google Play services and remove the 'Contacts' permission. Then Mooncat's. That's it. When you see your hamburger sliding menu in the Contacts app showing the 'Sign in' button, then it's a success O.

PS - Leave the auto-sync option on, or else the un-syncing of contacts will not work!

If you follow my steps, you leave the contacts sync option turned off in the accounts settings. The only way it would sync is if you turned contacts sync on again (which you would not want to do anyway, unless you needed those contacts again).

I would also suggest not disabling the contacts permission for Google Play Services. If that is disabled, any new contacts will not sync properly with the Google servers. I found that out the hard way when voice dialing wasn't working for some contacts I added a while back. I don't remember if the contacts were sync'd to the Google servers, but I did find out that Play Services is used by Google Assistant. My guess is it records your voice command and sends it to the servers for interpreting. Disabling the contacts permission in Play Services was blocking that ability for some reason.

 

[gaaah]

If you follow my steps, you leave the contacts sync option turned off in the accounts settings.

Yeah that's what I did. In my side I did this step twice because I forgot that I wasn't supposed to disable the auto-sync switch in the Users & Accounts.

I would also suggest not disabling the contacts permission for Google Play Services. If that is disabled, any new contacts will not sync properly with the Google servers.

Guess this only applies to someone like me then, just wanting a strictly phone numbers only Contacts app and no google emails. Plus I don't use Google Assistant anyway. Thanks for the steps

 

[Mooncatt]

Plus I don't use Google Assistant anyway. Thanks for the steps

Neither do I. Unfortunately, voice dialing with Bluetooth is a must for me (I drive for a living), and that runs through Goggle Assistant. I don't have to set it completely up, at least.

 

[rood15]

Thanks to both of you for this thread. I went with Gaah's extra steps because I don't want any contacts listed in my phone. I had to do a factory reset recently and couldn't remember how I unsynced them the first time. Very helpful.