It can be convenient to have suggested contacts pop up at the top of your iPhone’s share sheet. But all those faces and monograms can make the sharing menu cluttered, give away who you’ve been chatting with recently and through which apps, and show up in screenshots and screen recordings. Thankfully, there’s a way to eliminate that whole row of suggestions — it’s just not obvious.
Before jumping right to removing the row of contact suggestions in your activity view, the developer term for your share sheet, it’s worth noting that you can temporarily remove individual contacts if that’s all you want.
To hide single contacts, simply long-press them in the share sheet and select “Suggest Less.” Doing this affects the contact itself, so no matter what app was labeled on the contact’s icon — Mail, Messages, Messenger, Slack, etc. — you’ll see that person less in the share sheet’s suggestions. They may reappear eventually, but “Suggest Less” will hide them again. You can also hide groups this way, but the people in the groups may still appear as separate suggestions.
Now, if you want the sharing menu’s row of suggestions completely gone:
- Open Settings.
- Tap “Siri & Search.”
- Toggle off “Show When Sharing” under Suggestions from Apple.
This works on iOS 16, iPadOS 16, iOS 15, and iPadOS 15. On iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, the switch was called “Suggestions When Sharing.”
The next time you hit the action button, i.e., the share button, your share sheet will appear sans the row of contact suggestions. You can reenable the suggestions row by flipping the switch back on, which may be the case when hiding contacts for privacy reasons during screenshots or screen recordings.
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