Okay, I had something very close to this problem a few months back. Maybe I can help.
By way of background, for years she used my Apple ID on her phone for one main reason: so we could both access our iCloud Photo Library. After me complaining online for years, Apple finally enabled iCloud Shared Photo Library last year (?), removing the final hurdle to this problem. So I was able to set her up on her iPhone with her own Apple ID. It took some shuffling to make sure she had her Notes and other things right.
But like you, we share Contacts. And like you said, the way to do that is to add a secondary iCloud account under her Mail settings. But let me back up and make sure you have everything right:
- I assume you’re both running a fairly current version of iOS
- You each have your own Apple ID
- You are each using your OWN Apple ID as the primary login on your iPhones
- I don’t know if this matters, but my wife and I are in the same “Family” for the purposes of Family Sharing. Are you two set up that way?
If all this is in place, we should be able to accomplish what you want. I think iPhone behaves like Mac in the sense that:
-
Primary iCloud Account - can access everything iCloud offers, including Photos, Drive, Messages, Notes, Find My, …
-
Secondary iCloud Account(s) - can only add Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders
So the first question is, under whose Apple ID are the Contacts currently existing? That person will have them natively on their phone. The other person should get access to them by Settings→ Mail → Accounts→ Add Account→ iCloud→ Contacts.
The gotcha is setting up your My Card. She will have access to BOTH your Contacts list and her OWN. And you can only have ONE My Card in each list. She has to make sure that CREATES A NEW card under her OWN Contacts list and sets that one as her My Card, or she will keep clobbering yours.
When I go into my wife’s phone, I see this:
See that I (we) have thousands of contacts under my Apple ID that has been added to her phone. My “My Card” is configured there, so she shouldn’t touch that one.
Instead, if you use the arrow to collapse that list, you will see that her “iCloud” contacts list is also there under the Lists section in Contacts. It’s probably empty. You need to add a (probably NEW) CONTACT under THAT iCloud account for her, and then set that as her My Card.
Once I did that, the problem was resolved.
I had to figure this out painfully on my own; I didn’t find it documented anywhere. It sort of makes sense, but Apple is not really useful at helping couples to manage this. An easy way Apple could improve this situation is to warn us before we modify someone else’s “My Card”, or perhaps prevent us from selecting our card from someone else’s iCloud Contacts. #AppleUX
I’d love to know if this works for you!
Merry Christmas to All!
Dave
