Apple added a lot of features to the iPhone with iOS 17, and one of the most notable is the contact card, a way to create your own digital business card using images, colors, and text.
Here’s how it works: When you call someone from iPhone to iPhone and save it to their contacts, your contacts card will appear on their screen. It replaces the much smaller notifications and thumbnail image that were previously displayed and gives you the freedom to get creative with how you want to appear to your friends, family, or co-workers.
When you set up your contacts card, you can also make changes to your Apple ID avatar based on the poster. For example, if you go to your iPhone or Mac settings, you’ll see that the profile picture can be changed to match what you’ve set up as your contacts poster, whether it’s a new picture you made or a specific Memoji.
How to set up a contact card in iOS 17
Right now, you need to run the iOS 17 public beta to take advantage of the Contact Posters feature. It will be available on all compatible iPhones when the full version of iOS 17 releases later in 2023.
To find contacts poster settings in iOS 17:
- Open the Contacts app on iPhone.
- Click on your name at the top of your contact list.
- Select contact photo and poster.
The first thing you’ll see is the contact poster options: the first and last name you want to use, whether you want to share your first name and photo at all, and whether you want to automatically share your posters with all your contacts or want iOS to ask you every time when you call someone on your contact list.
Now is your chance to get creative with what other people see when you call them.
To create a new contacts poster in iOS 17:
- Click Edit then to the symbol + (plus). If you swipe to the right, an option will also appear on the far right of existing contact posters Create new which you can use instead.
- At the bottom of the screen, select camera, Photo, memoji, or text to select the type of poster contact you want to create.
When you use the camera or photos to create a new contacts poster:
- Take a new photo or choose one from your library.
- Swipe left or right, or switch between image and font styles.
- Tap the color palette (bottom right) to change the color for any effect.
- Enlarge or reduce the size of a photo to resize and crop.
- Touch the text at the top to change the font style, weight, and color.
When you use Memoji to create a new contacts poster:
- Select a Memoji from the popup or click +to create a new one.
- Once you’ve created your new Memoji or a variant of an existing one, you can click on the camera icon to select your own expression and save it.
- On the next screen, you can click on the color slider (bottom left) to choose a background color, or change the Memoji image (and save the expression) by clicking the icon in the bottom right.
- Touch the text at the top to change the font style, weight, and color.
When you use Monogram to create a new contact poster:
- Touch the color palette (bottom left) to select a background color.
- Touch the text at the top to change the font style, weight, and color.
- Touch the letter in the lower right corner to change the large letters in the center of the poster. You can enter one or two characters (for example, your initials).
Regardless of the type of poster contact you are creating, click Ready when you are satisfied with the result, and then continue on the preview screen.
You can then use the new contact poster to also update the contact’s primary photo, which is used for Apple ID on devices and other people’s contact lists. Click Skip if you don’t want to do this, or Refresh if you do, and you’re happy with the contact’s photo based on your contact poster that’s shown on the screen.
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You can also select “Customize photo” (located under the button “Refresh“) if you want to update the contact’s photo but don’t want something based on the contact poster you just created. You again get the same four options as before: camera, Photo, memoji, text and emoji. In other words, you can have a poster with contact text, an emoji, or a Memoji, as well as a real picture of you.
Once this is done, the data will be changed in “Contacts” and a new poster will be installed. To switch between different created contact posters and customize them:
- Return to the Contacts section, click on your name, then select Contact photo and poster.
- Click Edit again.
- Swipe left or right to select the current contacts poster, or customize it for editing.
To delete a contact poster, swipe up on it, then tap the red trash can icon that appears.
It’s worth mentioning that contact card work great with another new iOS 17 feature, NameDrop. NameDrop is meant to be a faster and easier way to share contact information with someone: bring your iPhone close to someone else’s iPhone or Apple Watch, and assuming Bluetooth is enabled on both devices, you should be asked if you want to share your contact information.
This invitation displays the contact poster you have set as default, and of course, once the contact information is shared, your contact card will appear on the other person’s iPhone as well. However, NameDrop has not yet appeared in the iOS 17 public beta, so it will have to wait to see how it works.
