How to Find Recently Added Contacts on iPhone

This article shows how to find recently added contacts on your iPhone. It seems Apple wants to keep the Contacts app very simple. It does not give you a button or menu option to filter or sort your own contacts. This is in line with Apple’s sleek and simple design principles. I’ll show you how, using an iPhone shortcut (for Apple’s built-in Shortcuts app that comes on all recent iPhones) that you can use. This shortcut will also help you see when you added a contact to your iPhone. You don’t need to download a third party app! This will need only 4 taps when you follow the guide below. So it is quick and easy! Remember to share this article with friends to help them too!

The shortcut finds the 10 most recently added contacts in your iPhone. It might be handy in future if you find you want to see when the most recent contact was added, for example. In case you want more, I’ll also show you the details so you can edit it. If you like a challenge, I’ll show how to write your own shortcut to do this, if you prefer not to download one. Read on!

Introduction

Recently I wanted to find my most recently added contacts, in the Contacts app on my iPhone because I met someone a while back who’s name I didn’t remember. What I did recall is they had entered their details into my phone. I wanted to know is there a way to see recently added contacts in my iPhone.

But it seems there is no menu or button in the Contacts app to search by the most recently added ones.

However, the data is there in your phone, so you can use an iOS shortcut to go through the Contacts app and find the most recently added contacts.

As a bonus, you can select to find out when you added a contact to your iPhone.

This method uses a shortcut on your iPhone. Apple included by default the Shortcuts app in iOS 13 back in 2019.

You could alternatively download a third-party App from the app store, but that should not be necessary.

The great thing about using a ‘Shortcut’ in your own phone, is there is no risk of others tampering with your data.

You can even write it yourself with my guidance further below towards the end (after all that is more technical. but you probably can do it with my help).

Perhaps you could then change my shortcut to find your oldest contacts or filter contacts in a way you choose! Maybe you want to find contacts with an attachment (you can even filter by File Extension)!

When it does work for you, please remember to share this method with friends and family as it could help them also.

It means this will work for you if you have:

• iPhone 11
• iPhone 12
• (Oh, and any of the Pro or Max versions of all of these)
• iPhone 13
• iPhone 14
• And any older phone from iPhone 7 and up installed with iOS 13, iOS 14, iOS 15 or iOS 16 (the current one at time of this update edit).

On older version of iOS, you may have downloaded the shortcuts app so it might work for you.

How To Find Recently Added Contacts On iPhone

You need the shortcut that will interrogate the Contacts app data with your iPhone’s built-in Shortcuts app.

As written above, you can’t get find recently added contacts directly from within the app.

Are you familiar with the Shortcuts app? It is provided on every iPhone. Not everyone uses it though.

It was created by Apple to shortcut one or more tasks you do often.

For example you could get it to automate tasks, like open the weather and news every morning.

If you haven’t used the shortcuts app before, don’t worry it is pretty easy.

Apple Shortcuts Notes:

NOTE 1: Apple shares Shortcuts like this via their own purpose-built sharing site to ensure that shortcuts have gone through a verification process, and prevent others tampering with them, to make sure there is no risk to anyone’s phone.

NOTE 2: If you still don’t trust downloading a shortcut that has been verified by Apple, I’ll show you the code further below so you can create your own shortcut in your own phone. It is a little more technical, but not too difficult. Don’t worry, we at TheTechMentor.com are here to mentor you on all things tech!

Here is how to find recently added contacts on your iPhone:

Click or tap the button image further below.

It will take you to Apple’s iCloud Shortcuts website where you can download it to your iPhone.

When you see the page open in Safari (or your browser), tap or click ‘Get Shortcut’. (Tap number 2, & 3 to okay it.)

Go to the Shortcuts App. (It will likely open automatically.)

If you don’t see the app there already, then tap All, then search for “Find 10 Recent Contacts”.

It might find it if you just type ‘recent’ in the search (drag down to show the search entry).

The download link is here for the shortcut in case you missed it.

How to run it

Tap the Shortcut to run it. (Tap count up to 4. That is all you need to get results!)

Your Contacts app will open or appear front of screen (if already open).

• Wait… a little.
• I found it took around 5 seconds to go through all my contacts and filter out the 10 most recent.

Hey, I have a lot of contacts!

No doubt your iPhone model and number of contacts in your app will affect how long it takes for you.

A list will appear to show your 10 most recently added contacts. See below.

Bonus: See when you created a contact

There is a bonus in this shortcut so you can see when you created each contact in this list.

Here is how you do it:

Tap the row of any of the names in the list.

A new banner will pop up showing the date and time of the added contact you selected. See below.

Tap ‘Done’ to end the shortcut.

Most Recent Contact Added-iPhone

If you want to find most recent contact added to your iPhone, simply run the above shortcut and the most recently added contact will be the at the top of the list.

That is, the shortcut puts the last contact added to your iPhone, first.

Tap the top of the list to continue, and it will show exactly when that most recent contact was created.

Find Out When You Added A Contact-iPhone

To find out when you added a contact to your iPhone, you can use the shortcut above if that contact was within the last 10 you created.

If it was created longer ago, you can quite easily edit the code in the same Shortcut to search and filter many more that the most recent 10.

Let’s say you want the most recent 20, because (let’s assume) you are pretty sure the one you are looking for would be in that range.

Here is how you do it:

Tap the three dots top right of the Shortcut, and it will open it for editing.

The result you see might look unusual the first time you see it. Don’t worry, you can cancel an edit or delete it and download it again if you have to.

Scroll down until you see ‘Find’ ‘All Contacts’.

Change the ‘Get 10 contacts’ to a larger number, by tapping the plus sign. See below.

Now tap the play button (right arrow at the bottom right of screen) to run it.

Done!

Sort Contacts by Date Added

The above method to change the number of contacts, and the code to sort them, effectively gives you what you need to sort your contacts by date added.

If you need only the more recent contacts, then that is already done for you, even if you need to increase the number as shown above. Admittedly, that could be a hassle if you want to see all your contacts sorted by date created. Especially if you have many. It can be done though, so don’t worry.

Its might be most practical to re-enter that part of the shortcut.

Just leave ‘All Contacts’, i.e. don’t select a limit (leave the button off – see image further below to see what I mean).

Or you could write your own shortcut as shown below. Again, don’t select to put a limit. This way you can sort all contacts.

You can choose if you want oldest first or newest first at ‘Order’ (again, see image below).

I’ve shown you how to see recently added contacts on your iPhone.

I’ve also shown how to find most recent contact on your iPhone.

The I showed how to find out when you added a contact.

Write your own shortcut to find most recently added contacts in your iPhone

Now, for those who like a little more of a challenge!

I’ll show you how to create your own shortcut rather than download the one above.

This is just in case there is a further change you want to make, or if you don’t want to download one even from Apple’s verified Shortcuts site.

Open the Shortcuts app.

Tap the plus sign top right to add a new one.

If you want you can add a comment to explain what the shortcut is, and who it is by so when you share with friends they know you wrote it (I’d still prefer your note it was really by Jeff at TheTechMentor.com first!).

In the search bar at the bottom of screen, type “comment” (or the equivalent in your language).

Tap the Comment box or button, so you can type in some text that will not do anything other than explain whatever you would like to write. This is good practice for larger shortcuts, so you know what parts of a shortcut do.

Here it is helpful to explain that this shortcut finds recently added contacts in your iPhone.

Tap Open App (further down the screen, not the first option). Then tap the ‘App’ button that appears for selection options.

Move down the list and tap on ‘Contacts’.

Type “Find” into the search bar at the bottom.

Now, look through the action options to see ‘Find Contacts’, under ‘Contacts’. Tap it.

Change the ‘Sort by’ option to ‘Creation Date’ further down the page (tap on None to change it). You will see here there are very many options!

How to find Newly Added Contacts iPhone (rather than default ‘Oldest’)

You wont get the newly added contacts by default.

For the Order, select ‘Latest First’ for the filter to find only the most recent contacts first (tap ‘Oldest First’ to change this).

Finally tap the slider button to turn on ‘Limit’. The default will be 5.

Use the plus or minus sign buttons to adjust the number of contacts you want to see.

More contacts will take slightly longer when it runs.

Your shortcut should start to look like the one below (if in English).

The next step is optional. That is, if you want when they were added (not only to find newly added contacts to your iPhone).

Add step to see when newly added contact was created

In the search bar, type “Show” as the next action. Tap ‘Show Result’.

NOTE: when looking at a potential next action, you can tap the ‘i’ for information about the action at the right of the row.

Select ‘Creation Date’ from the many options.

You see here you can get all sorts of contact information you might be interested to find. But that is for you to make another shortcut if you want!

Now to run your own shortcut, press the play button (right arrow) bottom right.

For the remaining part of the original shortcut, see the image below.

Some FAQs follow further below.

The key items I have shown above are:

1. How to find recently added contacts on an iPhone (the last 10 or so).
2. Find the most recent contact in an iPhone.
3. Find out when you added a contact to your iPhone.
4. How to sort contacts by date added.