Personal CRM for Apple Contacts
Your Apple address book knows the numbers. Endearist knows the relationship.
Apple Contacts is an excellent address book and a terrible memory. It knows how to reach someone — but not when you last spoke, what's going on in their life, or that you'd resolved to be in touch more often. That's exactly the layer Endearist adds on top: export your contacts once as a vCard, import them, and entries become relationships with a journal, a warmth score, and their own check-in rhythm. Your address book stays what it is — the system of record for numbers and addresses, which Endearist only reads from and never writes into. And if you use several devices, iCloud can serve as the end-to-end encrypted sync backend, keeping everything inside infrastructure you already trust.
Using Endearist with Apple Contacts
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Export your contacts on the Mac as a vCard
Open the Contacts app on your Mac, select everyone with Cmd-A (or just a subset), and choose File → Export → Export vCard. You get a single .vcf file containing all selected contacts including photos and notes — the most complete export format Apple offers.
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No Mac? Export via iCloud.com or your iPhone
Sign in at icloud.com, open Contacts, select all, and click "Export vCard" — multiple selected people land in one combined .vcf file. Directly on the iPhone, you can select contacts in the Contacts app and share them as a vCard, for instance to yourself via AirDrop or into the Files app.
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Import the vCard and tidy up along the way
On import, Endearist reads the .vcf file locally and reconciles duplicates — the double entries every address book accumulates over the years get flagged for merging. None of it leaves your device; there is no upload and no server processing your contacts.
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Build the relationship layer Apple leaves out
Now comes the part no address book can do: sort your people into circles, give the important ones a check-in rhythm, and capture what happens between you in the journal — via the share sheet, straight from messages or photos. From then on, the warmth score shows you which relationship needs attention.
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Sync via iCloud — encrypted
If you run Endearist on iPhone and Mac, choose iCloud as the sync backend. Your relationship data is end-to-end encrypted before upload; what sits in your iCloud is ciphertext only your devices can decrypt. No new account, no extra vendor — and still nobody reading along.
What works — honestly
| Capability | Status | Details |
|---|---|---|
| vCard import from Mac, iPhone, or iCloud.com | Works | Single and combined .vcf files are read, including photos and notes, with duplicate reconciliation on import. |
| Relationship layer: journal, warmth score, cadences | Works | Everything Apple Contacts lacks: history, reminders, and a sense of which relationship is cooling off. |
| Apple Calendar as a read-only overlay | Works | Events appear alongside your contacts — strictly read access; Endearist never creates or edits events. |
| iCloud as an E2E-encrypted sync backend | Works | Optional device sync via your own iCloud; encryption happens before upload, and only your devices can decrypt. |
| Bringing over new contacts from the address book | Manual | When new people enter your address book, export them as a vCard again. The import updates existing entries instead of creating duplicates. |
| Writing back into Apple Contacts | Not supported | A one-way street by design: your address book remains the system of record, and no Endearist bug can ever damage it. What you note in Endearist stays in Endearist — exportable as Markdown and CSV. |
| CardDAV live sync with the address book | Not supported | Deliberately not: silent background merges are the classic source of mangled address books. An explicit vCard import you trigger and can see is more boring — and safer for exactly that reason. |
Frequently asked questions
- How do I export Apple Contacts as a vCard?
- On the Mac: open the Contacts app, select all with Cmd-A, then File → Export → Export vCard. Without a Mac: open Contacts on icloud.com, select all, and choose "Export vCard" — you get one .vcf file with everyone selected, which Endearist imports directly.
- Does Endearist replace the Apple Contacts app?
- No, and that's intentional. Apple Contacts remains your primary address book — for calls, messages, and everything deeply wired into the system. Endearist is the layer above it: who matters to me, when do I reach out, what has happened between us. Only the two together give you the full picture.
- Does Endearist continuously sync with my Apple address book?
- No — reconciliation happens through vCard exports you trigger yourself. There is deliberately no CardDAV live sync: automatic background merges are the most common cause of corrupted address books, and that's a risk a local-first tool shouldn't take.
- Can I use iCloud to sync between iPhone and Mac?
- Yes. iCloud is one of the supported sync backends, alongside Google Drive, WebDAV, and Endearist Cloud (EU). In every case, data is end-to-end encrypted before upload — the storage only ever holds ciphertext that exclusively your devices can read.
Last updated: 2026-06-10
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