A troubling issue has lately been reported by many Google Pixel and Samsung device users: their contacts have inexplicably disappeared from their Android phones.
These impacted users were met with the upsetting notification “No contacts in this account” when they opened the Google Contacts app. Fortunately, all of the contacts can still be accessible at contacts.google.com, despite the unsatisfactory mobile web interface.
So far, attempts to restore or synchronize the contacts have failed. The following actions have been tried by users: opening the Settings app, picking “Passwords & accounts,” selecting their [@gmail.com address], going to Account sync, and switching the Contacts switch.
This missing contacts issue on Android appears to be the result of a synchronizing challenge, maybe connected to Google Play services. It is still unclear whether this issue is directly connected, however a recent Google Play services update (version 23.20+) made a change that made it so that disabling sync with Google Contacts would remove previously synced contacts from the Android device.
In the last day alone, there have been multiple reports of this problem, mostly from Pixel owners of various device generations. It’s crucial to remember that this issue does not seem to be exclusive to any one OS version, even the most recent Android 13 QPR3 update. Additionally, there have been reports from users of Samsung devices, indicating that this may be a more common issue with Google Play services.
Source: 9to5google
