Skip to content

Delete contacts from SIM card

This library provides the SimContactsDelete API that allows you to delete existing contacts from the SIM card.

An instance of the SimContactsDelete API is obtained by,

val delete = Contacts(context).sim().delete()

Note that SIM card deletes will only work if there is a SIM card in the ready state. For more info, read SIM card state.

A basic delete

To delete a set of existing contacts from the SIM card,

val deleteResult = Contacts(context)
    .sim()
    .delete()
    .simContacts(existingSimContacts)
    .commit()

To delete using name and number,

val deleteResult = Contacts(context)
    .sim()
    .delete()
    .simContact(name, number)
    .commit()

Executing the delete

To execute the delete,

.commit()

Handling the delete result

The commit function returns a Result,

To check if all deletes succeeded,

val allDeletesSuccessful = deleteResult.isSuccessful

To check if a particular delete succeeded,

val deleteSuccessful = deleteResult.isSuccessful(simContact)
val deleteSuccessful = deleteResult.isSuccessful(name, number)

Performing the delete and result processing asynchronously

Deletes are executed when the commit or commitInOneTransaction function is invoked. The work is done in the same thread as the call-site. This may result in a choppy UI.

To perform the work in a different thread, use the Kotlin coroutine extensions provided in the async module. For more info, read Execute work outside of the UI thread using coroutines.

You may, of course, use other multi-threading libraries or just do it yourself =)

ℹ️ Extensions for Kotlin Flow and RxJava are also in the project roadmap.

Performing the delete with permission

Deletes require the android.permission.WRITE_CONTACTS permissions. If not granted, the delete will do nothing and return a failed result.

To perform the delete with permission, use the extensions provided in the permissions module. For more info, read Permissions handling using coroutines.

You may, of course, use other permission handling libraries or just do it yourself =)

Known issues

Samsung phones (and perhaps other OEMs) support emails (in addition to name and number) data ahead of the Android 12 release. Updating and deleting SIM contacts that have email data using the APIs provided in this library may fail. This issue does not occur when moving the SIM card to a different phone that does not support emails.