To use Siri on macOS, there’s a requirement to send Apple your contacts. Here’s how to avoid handing that data over to Apple.
If you have enabled Siri in System Settings in macOS, you may have noticed an alert that warns you turning Siri on will result in macOS sending your contacts, location, and voice data to Apple.
This is a ridiculous requirement by Apple, and in fact it flies in the face of Apple’s claims of respecting user privacy. For obvious reasons, you might not want all your contacts sent to Apple.
Nonetheless, if you want to use Siri in macOS Sequoia it’s required.
Workarounds
With a little extra effort, however, you can still enable Siri in macOS and keep your contacts private.
In order to do so, you’ll need to make backups of your contacts data so you can restore it later.
Using this method, you can simply remove your contacts data from your Mac, then enable Siri – preventing any of your Contacts data from being sent.
While this is a bit of an inconvenience, it works.
Another less desirable option is to make an additional extra macOS Startup Disk which contains a clean copy of macOS. One which you can use only when you need Siri to be turned on.
Once you have two macOS boot disks, you can switch between them using the Startup Disk setting in System Settings. This is less than ideal as it requires several restarts of macOS, but it also works.
Also note that if you store your contacts in iCloud, you might want to turn off iCloud syncing for contacts after you make a local backup, then turn syncing back on once you’ve restored them.
Before you turn Siri on, you’ll first want to make a complete backup of all your contacts so you can restore them later. There are two methods of doing this which we’ll detail next.
For both methods make sure the System Settings app is not running.
Method 1: Export your contacts to an archive.
Using this method you’ll export your entire contacts database from the Contacts app to an archive.
Open the Contacts app and in the sidebar on the left select All Contacts. Don’t click on or change anything else, but immediately select File->Export->Contacts Archive… in the menu bar.
You’ll be prompted to save the Contacts Archive to disk. Give the file a name, select a location for it, and click Save. This saves your contacts into an .abbu (Address Book Backup) file.
The Contacts app used to be named Address Book in previous macOS versions.
Contacts also adds a timestamp to the .abbu filename so you know when the backup was made.
Always make sure the All Contacts item in the sidebar is selected before exporting your contacts to an archive. There are some older, longstanding bugs in Contacts which prevent the entire contacts database from being saved if All Contacts is not selected at the time of export.
This is really important and is an easy mistake to make, and a non-obvious one at that. If you fail to select All Contacts first when exporting, you might lose some of your data.
Now quit the Contacts app. Again, make sure the System Settings app is not running.
Method 2: Back up the AddressBook folder in the Finder.
Using this method, you navigate to where the Contacts files are stored on disk in Finder, then make a backup copy of them to another location for later restoration.
Make sure you have hidden files shown in the Finder first, then navigate to /Users/~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook on your Startup Disk (the “~” tilde character means the current user’s folder in UNIX parlance).
Select everything in the AddressBook folder (Command-A), hold down the Option key on your keyboard, and drag the entire contents of the AddressBook folder to another folder somewhere on your backup volume.
You might want to make a new backup folder just for these files as you’ll need to keep track of which ones to restore later.
Still making sure the Contacts app is not running, next delete the entire contents of the AddressBook folder and then select Finder->Empty Trash from the Mac’s menu bar. This deletes all the contacts data from your Mac.
Now re-open the Contacts app. All your addresses will be gone and Contacts will create a new, empty database in the AddressBook folder.
Head back to Apple menu->System Settings->Apple Intelligence & Siri and flip the Siri toggle switch on. You’ll get the same warning about Siri sending your Contacts, location, and voice data to Apple. This time click Enable.
Siri is now turned on but since all your contacts have been wiped from your Mac, Apple gets nothing. Your contacts are still safe because you backed them up earlier.
Actually, it’s probably not a bad idea to do both backup methods, just in case.
Once you’re done using Siri, flip the above toggle switch back off, and quit System Settings.
The process of restoring your contacts is essentially the reverse of the above backup steps except without the Export step.
There are two different ways of restoring your contacts to the Contacts app in macOS:
- Open the .abbu file you exported above to overwrite all contacts in the app
- Move the backed-up files back to the AddressBook folder mentioned above
Method 1: To use the first method, find the exported .abbu file you made above, and simply double-click it in the Finder. Contacts will launch and you’ll be asked if you’re sure you want to replace all the existing contacts with those in the .abbu file. Click Replace All.
Note once you click Replace All there’s no way to undo the replace.
You now have all your original contacts restored to the Contacts app. This method is slightly less safe because there are some very old bugs in the Contacts app which would occasionally not restore all the records in the .abbu file.
The cause of these bugs was never determined by Apple but they appear to have been fixed in modern versions of macOS. Still, for safety reasons you might want to use Method 2 below instead.
Method 2: To use the second method, make sure the Contacts app is not running and then move the entire contents of the backed-up copy of the AddressBook folder from above back to the original location (inside the the AddressBook folder).
This replaces any new AddressBook files that may have been created in the same location by the app. This also overwrites everything in the AddressBook folder and restores your original Contacts.
When you open the Contacts app again, all your previous contacts are restored. This method is a bit safer since it avoids the potential for the rare Contacts Export bug mentioned above from occurring.
When you use Method 2, you get back exactly what you had before you backed up above.
It also avoids the possibility that you forgot to select the All Contacts row in the Contacts app when you did an export to an .abbu file in Method 1.
Technical details
The macOS Contacts app is in fact a simple SQLite database editor – and it stores its Contacts data as standard local .sqlite database files.
Don’t let the .abcddb extension on the database files stored in the AddressBook folder fool you: these files are SQLite files. If you make a copy of an .abcddb file from the AddressBook folder and then change its file extension to .sqlite you will be able to view the file in any standard SQLite app on the Mac (such as DB Browser for SQLite).
In macOS Sequoia, if you open the AddressBook-v22.abcddb file in a SQLite editor, you can view all the database table info, metadata, and each record. The metadata shows some interesting additional info such as when each record was changed.
The table “ZABCDRECORD” contains each contact record’s data. The ability to view the Contacts database directly opens up some interesting possibilities.
While these workarounds for avoiding sending your contact info to Apple are a bit of a hassle, they’re quick and simple ways to enable Siri while still maintaining your data privacy.
It’s a good idea to make periodic backups of your contacts data anyway just for security purposes.
