iOS 26 syncing Favorites across devices with same iCloud ID

Jonathan Burger is quite correct, and if it didn’t work that way in iOS18 too I would be very surprised.,

You may have had one of the phones settings iPhone, Settings, [tap your name], iCloud, see all, with Contacts turned off and used another cloud account like Google for business contacts.

Settings, Apps, Contacts, Accounts could have different account turned on for Contacts, the other turned off.

OR

It could even be iPhone, Settings, [tap your name], iCloud, see all, Phone and FaceTime that was turned off.

donniedarkhorse wrote:

Whilst I can't tell if thiagomello has the same situation, my issue is that favorites from two separate phones (one syncing contacts to iCloud, the other syncing to Exchange) have, following updating to iOS26, merged their favorites lists. This means that both devices now have the same (longer) favorites list which is a mix of iCloud and Exchange contacts. On the phone syncing contact to iCloud, the Exchange favorites show as unrecognized numbers - and vice versa.

This is very much a change in iOS26.

I agree that there should at the very least be a toggle to either allow or restrict favorites across devices.

Always difficult when people join the thread and we answer them directly. They were talking about contacts in general, quite possible that favorites follows a different protocol, ie favorites of yours, you the person = your Apple account.

I am still surprised that is a change. Different Apple accounts would be therefore the fix.

That’s the way it is supposed to work.

Use a different Apple ID on one of the devices.

I found an App that allows me to have different Favorites on each iPhone under the same Apple ID. It's called Favorites Widget Pro. It's a good work around. It cost two dollars.

I may have found a solution to this issue. So far it has stopped syncing on my phones. I’m skeptical as the solution seems too simple.

Have had this same issue with phone # favorites syncing on my two phones sharing an Apple account since upgrading both phones and running iOS 26 for about a month now.

First thing I did was make sure all iCloud syncing and backup were turned off on both phones. I’ve found that any time there is a software update it is necessary to do this. Updates seem to randomly turn on syncing with some apps. This alone didn’t stop the syncing of the favorites.

What I stumbled onto, and this is the first time I’ve had this happen with a software update, is the names for both of my devices were renamed to just iPhone. Once I found this and renamed them to different names, the syncing of the favorites #’s stopped. So far anyhow. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

There is a “Phone & FaceTime” sync now in iCloud within ios26 that I don’t recall before and I think it’s causing this. I too just started experiencing this problem and I’m hopeful toggling that off (not “Contacts” which is rightly separate) will fix this and also fix voicemails sometimes syncing across different phone numbers using the same account.

That has always been the case, unless you turned off iCloud contacts sync for one or both phones. However Sync may have turned back on.

You should choose the phone you prefer. Or learn to use the ones you have.,

As I pointed out before your post, updates often change settings, sometimes Screen Time gets dditional restrictions. Usually it does not arm but if anyone uses a Do Not Sync strategy to keep things apart, and it gets turned on, it can cause problems.

Better to use iCloud Contacts for one phone and Microsoft Exchange people, or Google contacts for the other phone.

Change the thread sort order to Oldest instead of Rank to follow the argument better.

I have this issue too.

Contacts and Phone & FaceTime syncing is switched off for my work iPhone (it was switched off before iOS26 and remains the case after update to iOS26).

The contacts lists on the two devices remain entirely separate, it is only the favorites that have been merged. My work favorites now appear as unknown numbers (i.e. without contact names) in my personal favorites list and vice versa.

Up until I updated both phones to iOS26, the favorites lists remained separate.

iCloud syncing of some data across the two devices is very useful and I want to continue this. It has worked flawlessly for the last ten years up until iOS26.

and in doing so, break the ability to use airpods across all of your devices, or even enroll your work phone into Applecare one.

This was never the way it worked, and its ridiculous that the change was made.

Theres even an icloud toggle now called "phone & facetime" which seems to unlink the recent call lists, that is exciting! -- the concurrent change to START syncing the favorites list is insane.

thiagomello wrote:

Same Problem.

I use two iPhones—one personal and one for work, each with its own separate contact lists, naturally.

iCloud has always treated them as distinct devices with different backups and so on. It makes no sense to allow two iPhones on the same iCloud account if they can't be kept separate. Why would I want everything to sync between them?

If they want to launch a sync feature, that's fine, but it needs to be configurable. Users should be able to toggle it on for each device if they wish. Otherwise, they should just assume that a single account can only have one iPhone, because the current behavior merges everything anyway.

I am truly disappointed.

It is configurable, you can choose to sync each phone's contacts to iCloud or not, but if sync gets turned on in an update they could merge. As I said above you should use a different cloud like Google or Outlook for your business contacts then if icloud turns on it can simply be turned off.

There was no change to the process in iOS26

Whilst I can't tell if thiagomello has the same situation, my issue is that favorites from two separate phones (one syncing contacts to iCloud, the other syncing to Exchange) have, following updating to iOS26, merged their favorites lists. This means that both devices now have the same (longer) favorites list which is a mix of iCloud and Exchange contacts. On the phone syncing contact to iCloud, the Exchange favorites show as unrecognized numbers - and vice versa.

This is very much a change in iOS26.

I agree that there should at the very least be a toggle to either allow or restrict favorites across devices.

Drfrazier wrote:

I am having the same issue with the favorites. It worked with IOS 18 and now under IOS 26 it doesn't. So far, there is no resolution. Since Apple messed it up, maybe a third party app can fix it.

I strongly advise you to read the rest of the thread, in sequence oldest first, not the default Rank.

I have read the thread, is there a way to downgrade to ios18 again. I am concerned about this discussion and the direction it takes from Apple side. The separate Favorites list by device worked until changing to ios26.

….changing legacy behavior comes always with trouble. I would have expected a legacy behavior option here, if Apple wants to prepare the further merging of MacOS and iOS.

You can make a suggestion to Apple here -

Feedback - iPhone - Apple