iPhone 12 Not Showing Contact Name On Incoming Calls? Fix!

Some iPhone 12 users reported a certain problem concerning incoming calls and contacts. Namely, it seems that the incoming call is not showing contact name on iPhone 12 users. No worries, though, whether it is your iPhone 12 not displaying contact name for incoming calls, we have a few solutions to help you address this as soon as possible.

It’s quite frustrating if your iPhone 12 is not showing contact name on incoming calls, instead only displaying the numbers. Often if you start seeing only contacts numbers rather than names on incoming calls, this can cause some panic for iPhone users as it gives the impression that you have lost all your contacts information and contacts names on the iPhone.

Not to worry, most likely your contacts are not lost at all, they’re still intact and this display issue is either the result of a simple error, bug, or temporary issue, and there’s typically a quick resolution.

In this article, I’ll explain how to fix and troubleshooting iPhone 12 not displaying contact names, and/or iPhone 12 not displaying contact name for incoming calls.

Contents show

How to Fix iPhone 12 not displaying contact name for incoming calls

Here are some troubleshooting steps to fix iPhone 12 not showing contact name on incoming calls, and elsewhere where you’d expect to see contacts names rather than just contacts numbers.

Restart your iPhone

If you find your iPhone 12 not showing contact name on incoming calls, the first solution to try is to restart the device. This fixes the missing contacts names issue almost every time, and it’s a simple procedure.

You can do this by turning it off and then turning it back on again, or you can perform a hard reboot. You can shut down iPhone by going to Settings > General > Shut Down. Wait for the iPhone to power down completely before turning it back on again. Below are instructions for forcibly rebooting the iPhone 12:

Quickly press and release Volume Up
Quickly press and release Volume Down
Press and hold the Side button
Keep holding the Side button until the Apple logo appears on the screen to signify the iPhone has restarted.

Check if iCloud Contacts Are Enabled

The next most common reason why you are experiencing the problem of iPhone 12 not showing contact names is that somehow iCloud Contacts has been turned off, but you were previously using it.

Go to Settings > tap your profile at the top of the screen to access Apple ID settings > iCloud > and look under Apps Using iCloud and make sure that “Contacts” is toggled to the ON position to be enabled.

Sometimes users may have accidentally turned this feature off, or sometimes it seems to turn itself off inadvertently after some iOS software updates, or even after crashes or perhaps entirely at random.

If you aren’t using this feature for some reason, then it’s a good idea to use iCloud Contacts because they’re so easy to recover and restore.

Change Region, Reboot, Change Region Again

Another approach to fix iPhone 12 not showing contact name on incoming calls issue is to change the devices language and region, restart the device, and then change the region/language back to what it should be again. Why this works is unclear, but it is reported to fix the issue for several users:

Start the “Settings” app then go to “General” and tap “Language & Region”
Change the region to something different
Forcibly restart the iPhone:

Quickly press and release Volume Up
Quickly press and release Volume Down
Press and hold the Side button
Keep holding the Side button until the Apple logo appears on the screen to signify the iPhone has restarted

Return to Settings and change Language & Region back to your country/region.

Reset your iPhone’s settings.

Believe it or not, bugs in your low-level settings can cause contact name to stop showing on incoming calls altogether. These settings aren’t easy to access, but you can easily fix them by resetting all of your iPhone’s settings. Erasing your settings won’t mess with your data, either — so you don’t have to worry that this quick fix will delete years of photos or messages.

It’s easy to reset your iPhone 12 settings. To do this:

From the Home screen, navigatehead Settings > General > Reset.
Select Reset All Settings.
Type in your passcode when prompted.
Select Reset All Settings to confirm.
Allow several minutes for the reset and reboot processes to complete.

iPhone 12 not showing contact names at all? Time to recover or restore them

If the above tips didn’t work, there are a few options available here.

You can restore lost contacts from iCloud if you had previously used iCloud to store contacts before, and that will restore contacts to all devices connected to iCloud.
You can restore an iPhone from a recent backup to recover contacts as well, but that should not be necessary unless they have been deleted or removed since that backup was made.
If you exported the contacts as a VCF file at some point in time, you can reimport them to the iPhone that way too.

For step-by-step instructions on how to recover deleted contacts, check out iPhoneGeeks article about Top Ways to Recover Deleted Contacts on iPhone.