For a quick and easy way to see how close you are to your friends, or even a business, you can connect your contacts to your Maps app.
When you’re traveling, you can get the distance or directions to their house. When you want to mail a gift but can’t quite remember a street address, you can see it on the map. There are all sorts of ways that connecting people from your Contacts list to the Apple Maps app can come in handy, so here are two different ways to do it.
Related:
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- How to Export Contacts to Excel from your Mac and iPhone
- Apple Watch Not Importing or Syncing Contacts? How-To Fix For Good
Connect Your Contacts Using the Maps App
If you already have your Maps app open, then this method is convenient.
- Enter your contact’s address into the search box at the bottom of the app.
- When the address is found, slide up from the bottom to open the full window.
- Tap Add to Existing Contact. Note, you can also tap Create New Contact if it’s for a new friend.
- Find your contact in the list and the address will pop into their details.
- Tap Update to save the address for that contact.
Maybe you are visiting this home or business for the first time and are actually at the location. Instead of entering the address into the search box, tap the Location button on the top.
The map will move to your spot and the address will display in the window at the bottom. Slide up and then follow the same steps as above to add the address to an existing contact or create a new one.
Connect to Maps Using the Contacts app
If you have your contact’s address in the Contacts app, you can see their location in the Maps app with a tap.
- Open your Contacts app and head to your contact.
- You will see their address and a small map image. Just tap that map image and the Maps app will open to that spot.
Find Your Friends
When you use the Maps app after saving an address with one of these two methods, you can find that location on the map easily.
- Open the Maps app.
- Start typing in your contact’s name in the search box.
- When you see the correct contact, tap it and their address will display on the map.
Conclusion
Whether it’s on your device or in your car, connecting apps like these together make it super easy to get where you want to go faster. Is there a trick that you use like this that you think would help others? If so, feel free to share it the comments below.

Sandy worked for many years in the IT industry as a project manager, department manager, and PMO Lead. She then decided to follow her dream and now writes about technology full-time. Sandy holds a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology.
She loves technology– specifically – terrific games and apps for iOS, software that makes your life easier, and productivity tools that you can use every day, in both work and home environments.
Her articles have regularly been featured at MakeUseOf, iDownloadBlog and many other leading tech publications.
Patricia says
Hello. I’d like my personal contacts to appear at the top of the list of options when I type in their name.
Instead, for example, if I type in “Mont” looking for my contact Montgomery Studio, I get 13 different options listed before the contact I want.
They are from across the state (Montgomery, IL) and Canada (Montreal, QC, Canada), public places like Montrose Beach.
And, I have to scroll to get to my desired contact. Is there a place to set that preference?
I know I can type and extra Peter or two, but it doesn’t always work either. Thank-you!
Tony Nguyen says
Under your section of Find Your Friends…for some reason my iPhone X running the latest iOS has all my contacts listed at the bottom when I search in the Maps app.
In the past when I typed in the contacts name in the search it would pop up at the top…now it is at the bottom!
Any help??? I’ve reset my phone like 3 times!!!
SK says
Hi Tony,
This is just a design change for iOS 12. We tested with an iPhone X, XR, and 7 and all of them act the same. So, since it is an intentional design change, you cannot move it back to the top, as you prefer.
If you’re really unhappy with this change, let Apple know via its feedback site!