BusyContacts
Powerful Contact Manager
Only for Mac
Free · In‑App Purchases
BusyContacts is a contact manager for macOS that makes creating, finding, and managing contacts faster and more efficient. It brings to contact management the same power, flexibility, and sharing capabilities that BusyCal users have enjoyed with their calendars. What's more, BusyContacts integrates seamlessly with BusyCal forming a flexible, easy to use CRM solution that works the way you do.
BusyContacts syncs with the built-in Contacts app on macOS and iOS via CardDAV and supports all leading cloud services, including iCloud, Google, Office 365, Exchange, Fastmail, Yahoo & Twitter.
The app comes with a free 14 day trial and requires an active subscription to function. Please see the In-App Purchases section for pricing information. One subscription covers the entire family.
ACTIVITY LIST
The Activity List shows a chronological listing of activities associated with the selected contact including emails (from Apple Mail), meetings, tasks and other calendar events (requires BusyCal) as well as communication through social network posts.
CUSTOMIZABLE VIEWS
Contacts can be displayed in two views: A single column list view, or a multi-column table view that allows you to control the columns displayed (e.g. company, last name, first name, email, phone, etc.) and the sort order.
BUSINESS CARD READER
Create contacts by importing an image of a business card or an email signature.
TAGS
Tags are an extremely flexible way to manage contacts in BusyContacts. You can assign multiple tags to each contact and a tag cloud allows you to easily filter the list of contacts by tag (e.g. family, client, prospect, coworker, etc.).
SMART FILTERS
Smart Filters are a powerful tool for filtering contacts and creating saved searches that can be applied with a single click. You can create Smart Filters to display contacts that match certain conditions, such as a text string, tag, or birthdate. Or you can create Smart Filters to remember view settings such as columns displayed and sort order.
BUSYCAL INTEGRATION
BusyContacts integrates with BusyCal allowing you to link contacts to events and to dos in your calendar, providing flexible CRM capabilities for scheduling meetings, follow up tasks, and tracking past activities.
SYNC
BusyContacts syncs with all leading cloud services including iCloud, Google, Office 365, Exchange, Fastmail, Yahoo and other CardDAV servers, and syncs with the built-in Contacts app on macOS and iOS via iCloud CardDAV.
CSV EXPORT
Export your contacts as a comma-separated values file!
SHARE
BusyContacts allows you to share address books with other BusyContacts users with read-only or read/write privileges. Address Books can be shared through Office 365, Exchange, Fruux, Kerio, over the LAN, and through other CardDAV servers that support sharing.
more …missing a key feature: custom column heading config in list view. For example, for items tagged as a business, when I select the business tag the list view should display the business name in the first column and not show the first/last name columns. But for my “Friends” tag, it should show their names only and not show a “company” name.
…missing a key feature: custom column heading config in list view. For example, for items tagged as a business, when I select the business tag the list view should display the business name in the first column and not show the first/last name columns. But for my “Friends” tag, it should show their names only and not show a “company” name.
BusyContacts and BusyCal form an impressive duo in how they work together (and share data with Apple’s built-in applications). I just switched from a PC, where I had been managing contacts using Outlook 2010. I had been reluctant to switch over to a Mac, despite my wife’s cajoling me that “it just works,” because the Mac version of Outlook does not even let you see all the e-mail associated with a contact. BusyContacts does. Through its integration with BusyCal, you can see past and future activities instantly and elegantly on one screen. Spending just a few minutes with this software put my concerns to rest, and convinced me that real contact management is possible without subscribing to some overloaded CRM service.
BusyContacts and BusyCal form an impressive duo in how they work together (and share data with Apple’s built-in applications). I just switched from a PC, where I had been managing contacts using Outlook 2010. I had been reluctant to switch over to a Mac, despite my wife’s cajoling me that “it just works,” because the Mac version of Outlook does not even let you see all the e-mail associated with a contact. BusyContacts does. Through its integration with BusyCal, you can see past and future activities instantly and elegantly on one screen. Spending just a few minutes with this software put my concerns to rest, and convinced me that real contact management is possible without subscribing to some overloaded CRM service.
Looked for a long time for full-featured contact management app. As a journalist/publisher, contacts are critical to my work, and Busy Contacts fills the bill. I switched to iCloud contact syncing in order to remove some friction in my contact management, and this app fits right in. The fact that it also pulls data for the people I follow on Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn (to a point), and allows me to merge all of those along with the iCloud contacts, is the key feature I was looking for.I haven’t used the Activity feature, but may try to incorporate that as well. The ability to send email, including CC and BCC, to a tagged group is a great time-saver.I wish it was better integrated with the Airmail app I use for email. (Airmail keeps its own contacts as well as using what’s on the machine, and sometimes they are not in sync.)To this point, I have not fully explored all the features of Busy Contacts; if I do, I may need to give it six stars. <g>
Looked for a long time for full-featured contact management app. As a journalist/publisher, contacts are critical to my work, and Busy Contacts fills the bill. I switched to iCloud contact syncing in order to remove some friction in my contact management, and this app fits right in. The fact that it also pulls data for the people I follow on Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn (to a point), and allows me to merge all of those along with the iCloud contacts, is the key feature I was looking for.I haven’t used the Activity feature, but may try to incorporate that as well. The ability to send email, including CC and BCC, to a tagged group is a great time-saver.I wish it was better integrated with the Airmail app I use for email. (Airmail keeps its own contacts as well as using what’s on the machine, and sometimes they are not in sync.)To this point, I have not fully explored all the features of Busy Contacts; if I do, I may need to give it six stars. <g>
I host all my contacts on an Exchange server. I have around 2,000 contacts and the program that came with the Mac would crash all the time. It also wasn’t very robust in that I couldn’t categorize my clients other than putting them in groups, without any color coding. With Busy contacts, I have all my contacts tagged with color codes, the program pulls in all the emails and messages I have sent them ever, and I can easily create new meetings and events. I love this program. And no crashing - yet.
I host all my contacts on an Exchange server. I have around 2,000 contacts and the program that came with the Mac would crash all the time. It also wasn’t very robust in that I couldn’t categorize my clients other than putting them in groups, without any color coding. With Busy contacts, I have all my contacts tagged with color codes, the program pulls in all the emails and messages I have sent them ever, and I can easily create new meetings and events. I love this program. And no crashing - yet.
· [NEW] Improved handling of relationships in Outlook and Microsoft Graph accounts
· New setting to hide floating windows when switching between apps, under Settings Views
· Handling of malformed vCards
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2026.2.2 Apr 29
· [NEW] New None and Extra Large photo size option for the Info Panel
· [NEW] New option to save edited phone numbers using your selected display format
· [NEW] New batch edit option under the Edit Menu Show Dates in Calendar to goggle the option on and off for all contacts in the current batch
· Improvements to street-field auto-fill
· Improvements to natural language processing
· Compatibility with some CardDAV servers when auto-detecting supported features
· Fixed a bug where adding additional custom labels for phone numbers would not work from settings
· Fixed a bug where revision dates from incoming contacts would be dropped if the card itself did not appear to have changed
· Fixed a bug where certain auto substitution options would not stick when set for the Notes field
· Fixed a bug where clicking on a row in List View would at times result in opening clickable content from the Info Panel underneath
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2026.1.3 Apr 1
· [NEW] Major performance and Quality of Life improvements in different areas of the app
· [NEW] New setting to Group Upcoming Events for showing upcoming birthdays and anniversaries at the top of your contacts list
· [NEW] New card layout style where the profile photo is now stacked with the contact name. Configurable in Settings Info Panel
· [NEW] New quick-jump index bar for Card View lets you fast-scroll through your contacts
· [NEW] New copy details button added to the Info Panel toolbar
· [NEW] New Pin toggle button added to the Info Panel toolbar
· [NEW] New and improved auto-completion suggestions when editing contact details
· [NEW] New and improved time zone suggestions when editing contact details
· [NEW] Auto-completions are now significantly faster and no longer interrupt typing
· [NEW] Insert Date & Time edit menu options now offer a range of date and time formats. Date & Time can also be inserted at cursor position instead of always at the top of the notes field.
· [NEW] New Insert Date & Time shortcut button when editing contact details
· [NEW] Clicking on the profile photo in the Info View now cycles through the three photo sizes instead of zooming two sizes: Small, Medium and Large
· [NEW] Related contacts in the Info View now display profile photos alongside their names
· [NEW] Drag & drop Tags from the tag panel to the Info Panel to add them to the contact
· [NEW] Info Panel Settings now display a list of all available contact fields to toggle on or off
· Improvements to the contact card view and editing experience
· Floating contact windows now remain visible when switching between apps
· Improved support for importing vCard 2.1 format files
· Improved Tag sorting in the Card View
· Jamaica address format is now supported
· Improved detection of very light tag colors to ensure better text contrast and readability
· Improved handling of iCloud sync errors where profile photos may download partially
· Improved compatibility of Relationship exports when converting vCards to CSV in third-party tools
· Improvements to Apple Mail Plugin
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2026.1.2 Mar 10
· [NEW] Mail Integration: BusyContacts now captures emails from Apple Mail (macOS 12+) for your contacts, displaying them in the Activity List.
· [NEW] Printing Mailing Labels now supports selecting layout orientation when using a custom page size
· Printing labels are now correctly centered vertically
· Improved timeline loading reliability when switching between contacts quickly
· Timeline entries now display relative dates on hover
· Calendar entries now populate immediately and reliably after clicking 'Show Calendar Events'
· Improved matching of contacts from BusyCal when identifiers have diverged across devices
· General optimizations around contact loading, linked contact detection and more
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2026.1.1 Jan 22
· [NEW] Label printing now lists all detected address labels from your contacts, instead of limiting to fixed Home and Work types
· [NEW] Label printing now supports printing All addresses associated with a contact
· Improvements to address parsing and auto-fill
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.4.4 12/19/2025
· [NEW] 'Department' now available as a print label option
· [NEW] New 'Print Borders' option when printing envelopes to toggle address border display
· [NEW] Sender and Recipient fonts can be separately configured when printing Envelopes
· Long company names now wrap when printing labels, instead of shrinking the font
· Locale-aware improvements to street address autocompletion
· Printing related improvements for the Japanese Address Format
· 'Duplicate Card' option added to contextual menu
· Phone number search now ignores formatting—leading zeros and international formats are handled automatically
· Tag capsule text is now more legible when using lighter tag colors
· Fixed bug where dropping a profile image on MS Graph contacts incorrectly showed an attachment error
· Fixed bug where company-marked cards wouldn’t show names when printing labels
· Fixed bug where printing labels was not using the preferred name order
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.4.3 12/02/2025
· Auto-complete no longer auto-selects the first entry when entering a relationship
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.4.2 11/19/2025
· [NEW] 'Auto-Fill Address from Street Field' now leverages Apple Intelligence (when available) as well as Apple Maps / Google Maps to intelligently complete address details
· [NEW] General Settings now contain a new Phone Display Style setting to switch between various formats (original, international, national)
· [NEW] New and improved profile image picker
· [NEW] New Edit Share menu. Quickly share selected cards via Airdrop, Email, Messages, and other supported services
· [NEW] Built-in vCard sanitizer automatically repairs malformed or corrupt cards imported or pulled during sync, ensuring contacts remain spec-compliant
· Support for importing multiple .vcf files via drag and drop in one go
· Instagram Activity feeds now use instagram.com directly to allow you to login and view social feeds
· Escape key now dismisses auto-complete suggestions when typing in the Related field
· Improved auto-linking of phone numbers that differ only in formatting or spacing
· Improved handling of vCards where version metadata and actual content structure don't match exactly
· Improved handling of malformed Contact Group vCards
· Copying a contact’s profile image now preserves its full resolution
· Address printing now respects each contact's individual address format instead of using the global app setting
· Improved birthdate recognition for partial dates when only month and year are provided, defaults to the 1st of the month
· Improved detection of system date formatting for better handling of date fields
· Fixed a bug where custom backup paths were not retained after restarting the app
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.4.1 10/23/2025
· [NEW] Support for macOS 26 Tahoe, including UI updates to match the new look
· [NEW] Added 'Show Previous Card' option to the View menu for cycling through recently selected contacts
· Improved phone number formatting and smarter detection of international numbers
· Quick entry field now wraps and shows multi-line entries
· Fixed bug where MS Graph would reject legacy phone labels imported from Exchange / Outlook
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.3.2 09/13/2025
· [NEW] Create contacts from Business Cards
· [NEW] Import and Share contacts as QR Code — quickly generate and scan vCards to exchange contact info with ease
· [NEW] New menu option to create a contact when the Clipboard contains vCard data
· [NEW] New Advanced Setting to choose whether addresses open in Google Maps or Apple Maps
· [NEW] Added URL support for opening BusyContacts with a specific Smart Filter selected via busycontacts://filter/
· [NEW] Under-the-hood optimizations and improved data storage techniques to boost performance
· Updated address book formats for some missing countries
· Fixed bug where the app may crash on certain types of contacts when exporting as CSV
· Fixed bug where certain fields would not show within the template contact within Settings Info Panel
· Fixed an issue where dragging or pasting an image onto a contact's profile photo would fail
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.3.1 08/26/2025
· [NEW] Microsoft Graph / Outlook sync support added
· [NEW] Custom Labels can now be removed individually from history, without clearing the entire list
· Restoring contacts from backups into an On My Mac address book now preserves their original "last modified date"
· Improved handling of identical contacts across multiple address books
· Improved tag panel sorting. Emoji prefixes are now ignored for cleaner alphabetical order
· Improved detection of addresses when pasting into an empty street field
· Fixed a bug where loading a large number of linked relationships would sometimes cause the app to hang
· Fixed an issue where deleting a tag would remove it from the contacts but the tag would linger around at times
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.2.2 06/07/2025
· [NEW] Microsoft Graph / Outlook sync support added
· [NEW] Custom Labels can now be removed individually from history, without clearing the entire list
· Restoring contacts from backups into an On My Mac address book now preserves their original "last modified date"
· Improved handling of identical contacts across multiple address books
· Improved tag panel sorting. Emoji prefixes are now ignored for cleaner alphabetical order
· Improved detection of addresses when pasting into an empty street field
· Fixed a bug where loading a large number of linked relationships would sometimes cause the app to hang
· Fixed an issue where deleting a tag would remove it from the contacts but the tag would linger around at times
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.2.1 05/02/2025
· [NEW] Activity Panel now displays feeds for: X (Twitter), Facebook, Bluesky, Dribbble, Github, Instagram, LinkedIn Feeds, Mastodon, Pinterest, Reddit, TikTok, Threads and YouTube for the selected contact
· [NEW] Social field now supports: Bluesky, Dribbble, LinkedIn Feed, Pinterest, Github, Threads, Instagram and Reddit
· [NEW] Export your contacts in Spreadsheet format (.csv) from File menu > Export > Spreadsheet (.csv). Ideal for reporting or analyzing contacts in applications such as Numbers, Excel, Google Sheets etc
· [NEW] Enhancements to Quick Entry with improved detection of contact details
· When printing labels, names can be turned off separately in order to only print nicknames
· Fixed bug where Go To My Card would not work randomly when Combine Linked Cards is turned on
· Fixed bug where entering a birthday without a year would pick 2024 for certain months
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2025.1.1 03/13/2025
* macOS Sequoia related improvements
* Improved mapping of UK postcodes
* Performance improvements when editing multiple contacts
* Improved HTML detection in notes
* Improved support for CardDAV servers that don't support sync tokens properly
* Improved support for older macOS versions
* Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2024.4.1 11/26/2024
* macOS Sequoia related improvements
* Improved support for older macOS versions
* Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
Recently:
[NEW] macOS Sequoia support
[NEW] New "Copy All" option added to the context menu; quickly copy multiple phone numbers, emails, or addresses
[NEW] Added a new batch removal options for birthdays, anniversaries, numbers, addresses etc in the context menu
[NEW] Added a context menu option to bulk-assign city, state, and country to selected contacts using a list of existing names
[NEW] Added a context menu option to bulk-assign job titles
[NEW] Added a context menu option to bulk-remove contact photos
[NEW] New option to include nicknames when printing labels
[NEW] TikTok added to Social Profile (IM) field
[NEW] New relationship types: grandparent, grandchild, cousin, uncle, aunt
[NEW] New settings to disable automatic address detection
* Improved handling of automatic HTML detection in notes
* Enhanced compatibility with Hookmark markdown links
* Improved formatting of WhatsApp numbers
* Enhanced detection of hyperlinks within notes
* Improved keyboard navigation between edited fields
* Enhanced handling of merged changes during background sync
* Zip / Postcode lookups now assign localized country names
* Auto-completions for names, companies, and addresses now require exact matches to be pre-selected, enabling easier entry of new information without needing to press the escape key
2024.3.2 09/23/2024
[NEW] macOS Sequoia support
[NEW] New "Copy All" option added to the context menu; quickly copy multiple phone numbers, emails, or addresses
[NEW] Added a new batch removal options for birthdays, anniversaries, numbers, addresses etc in the context menu
[NEW] Added a context menu option to bulk-assign city, state, and country to selected contacts using a list of existing names
[NEW] Added a context menu option to bulk-assign job titles
[NEW] Added a context menu option to bulk-remove contact photos
[NEW] New option to include nicknames when printing labels
[NEW] TikTok added to Social Profile (IM) field
[NEW] New relationship types: grandparent, grandchild, cousin, uncle, aunt
[NEW] New settings to disable automatic address detection
* Improved handling of automatic HTML detection in notes
* Enhanced compatibility with Hookmark markdown links
* Improved formatting of WhatsApp numbers
* Enhanced detection of hyperlinks within notes
* Improved keyboard navigation between edited fields
* Enhanced handling of merged changes during background sync
* Zip / Postcode lookups now assign localized country names
* Auto-completions for names, companies, and addresses now require exact matches to be pre-selected, enabling easier entry of new information without needing to press the escape key
* Fixed a bug where floating info panels would not remember their positions and sizes
* Fixes an issue where setting a number as preferred would get overwritten by Apple Contacts
* Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
2024.3.1 09/15/2024
* Fixed an issue where the font name in print settings would not restore
* Fixed an issue with social media links on Sonoma
* Ongoing stability improvements
2024.1.1 01/04/2024
* [NEW] You can now batch assign an existing Company to multiple contacts using the Edit menu
* macOS Sonoma compatibility
* Improved sorting for Swedish
* Ongoing stability improvements
2023.3.1 09/22/2023
[NEW] Workaround added for when related contacts go missing / have their internal identifiers changed. BusyContacts now automatically resolves severed links (only works for newly edited relationships).
* Fixed bug where clicking on a related company contact would not open the parent card
* Ongoing stability improvements
2023.2.1 06/03/2023
* Ongoing stability improvements
2023.1.1 03/30/2023
* Support for adding Mastodon social profile links
* Improved compatibility with Outlook when emailing a tag of contacts
* Ongoing stability improvements
2022.4.5 12/20/2022
* "Send to BusyContacts" option now shows up on the Services menu when you option+click on selected text. Use this to quickly create contacts from other apps.
* Improved handling of poorly formatted vCard data during import
* Improved interoperability with Daylite
* Improved sorting of the Birthday and Anniversary column in List view
* Fixed bug where Print dialog would fail to open for some users
* Ongoing stability improvements
2022.4.4 12/08/2022
* Ongoing stability improvements
2022.4.2 10/17/2022
* [NEW] WhatsApp now appears as an option for phone numbers
* Improved detection of organization name and job title when using Quick Entry with pasted contact details
* Improved detection of nextcloud CardDAV servers
* During merging of contacts, the same values, but differently cased, are now considered equal
* Fixed bug where info panel would take too much space in list view
* Fixed bug where assignment of a profile image would fail for large JPEGs
* Ongoing stability improvements
2022.4.1 10/10/2022
This is a major new release. As a result, BusyContacts has switched to subscription. If you had previously purchased BusyContacts from the app store, you may continue using that version instead.
* [NEW] Major visual refresh with clean, lean look
* [NEW] New and improved address book panel. All address books under an account can now be temporarily disabled by turning on Exclusion mode.
* [NEW] Pinned (i.e. flagged) contacts are now grouped in Card View and appear sorted above other contacts. This behavior can be turned off from Preferences > Views
* [NEW] New and improved smart filter selector
* [NEW] New floating smart filter panel
* [NEW] New app icon
* [NEW] Improved contact list in Card View
* [NEW] Contact counts now show against each contact section
* [NEW] Contact photos in contact list can be turned off optionally from Preferences > Views
* [NEW] New notes indicator displays against contacts with notes. Can be turned off optionally from Preferences > Views
* [NEW] Colored contact names can be turned on / off from Preferences > Views
* [NEW] Tweets timeline now supports dark mode
* Fixed mail plugin compatibility errors for affected users
* Fixes hang when loading contacts with a lot of mail activity
* Hiding the left panel no longer automatically selects "All Tags"
* Ongoing stability improvements
2022.3.1 07/29/2022
· [NEW] Improved handling of relationships in Outlook and Microsoft Graph accounts
· New setting to hide floating windows when switching between apps, under Settings Views
· Handling of malformed vCards
· Ongoing stability and performance enhancements
more Version 2026.2.2 Apr 29
Data Not Linked to You The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
