If you’ve ever wanted to go through your Contacts app and remove all those that you may have accumulated over time and no longer associate with, then you should know it’s possible to delete numerous contacts simultaneously without having to go through them one-by-one.

Bulk-delete contacts from the Mac Contacts app

To remove several contacts at a time from the Contacts app on your Mac, follow these steps:
1) Launch the Contacts app on your Mac.
2) Determine what people you want to remove from your Contacts app.
3) Hold down the Command () key on your keyboard and begin clicking on contact names to select more than one.
4) After selecting all the contacts you want to delete, go to Edit → Delete Cards in the Menu Bar. You can also right-click and select Delete Cards, or you can just hit the Delete key on your keyboard.
4) In the prompt that appears next, click on the blue Delete button to confirm your action.
Congratulations! You’ve just deleted multiple contacts all at once from the Contacts app on your mac!
Note: If you have Contacts set to sync automatically across all of your iCloud devices, then your changes will sync across all of your other iOS devices and Macs you own that are associated with the same iCloud account.

Bulk-delete contacts from iCloud

You can also perform the same task from iCloud.com, which might be useful if you’re using a Windows machine instead.
To bulk-delete contacts from iCloud, follow these steps:
1) Launch iCloud.com in your favorite web browser and sign in.
2) Click on the Contacts app from the iCloud.com Home screen.
3) Get an idea for who you want to delete from your Contacts list.
4) Hold down the Command (⌘) key on your keyboard and begin clicking on contact names to select more than one.
5) After selecting all the contacts you wish to delete, click on the Settings button at the bottom left of the window and choose the Delete option from the menu. You can also press the Delete key on your keyboard (Backspace for Windows).
6) In the prompt that appears next, click on the blue Delete button to confirm your action.
And just like that, your selected contacts will be removed from your iCloud account.
Note: Any devices tied to the iCloud account you are deleting contacts from will also have these contacts removed from them if they are set up to sync with your iCloud Contacts.

Wrapping up

Now that you know how to remove multiple contacts at the same time on your Mac, you’ll never have to go through the cumbersome process of deleting them one-by-one ever again. Not only do you save some time by doing things this way, but you save yourself some frustration as well.