Contacts are one of those things that you don’t really think about until something goes wrong. When you add someone, their info syncs to your Google account and gets automatically downloaded to all of your Android devices, and you don’t even have to fuss with things if you switch to a new phone. However, many users have reported not seeing their contacts at all, which may be caused by a recent Google update.

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When opening the Contacts app on their phones, some Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy users are seeing the message “No contacts in this account” (via 9to5Google). Every contact that was previously synced is removed from the device. What makes this strange is that the contacts are still clearly visible online at contacts.google.com, so the issue doesn’t appear to be central to any one device.

Interestingly, the May 2023 Google System Update, which was recently shipped out to most Android devices via the Google Play Store, outlines a change that sounds eerily familiar here. In the Utilities section of the update, it states that “Turning off sync with Google Contacts sync will now remove the previously synced contacts from your Android phone,” which may be the root of the problem here.

Luckily, this means that users don’t need to add their contacts back one at a time — the solution might be as simple as re-syncing your phone. To do this, go to Settings -> Passwords & accounts -> [your Gmail address] -> Account sync and enable the Contacts toggle.

The fact this is happening on multiple different devices seems to point to a problem with Google Contacts sync rather than any particular app. While Pixels use the Google Contacts app, Galaxy phones use Samsung’s Contacts app by default, so two different pieces of software are affected, but they both sync to Google Contacts on the backend. In this case, it’s possible that the update mentioned above may have automatically turned off contact sync. Either way, we’ll keep an eye on this story and post an update if anything new develops.