Google Contacts: List contacts — MCP tool

Google Contacts MCP tool: Lists the user's saved contacts with pagination, sorting and incremental-sync tokens.

Technical name: list_contacts

What task it solves

I want to list my saved contacts.

Returns the user's saved contacts (connections): each person carries resourceName (people/c... — the id every other tool takes), etag, and only the requested fields.

When to use it

Use it to browse or export the contact list, to find a contact when search is not precise enough, or to run incremental sync with sync tokens. For text lookup prefer Search contacts.

What to provide

• person_fields — optional. Fields to return; default names, emailAddresses, phoneNumbers, organizations, memberships.
• page_size — optional. 1..1000, default 100.
• page_token — optional. nextPageToken from the previous page.
• sort_order — optional. LAST_MODIFIED_ASCENDING (default), LAST_MODIFIED_DESCENDING, FIRST_NAME_ASCENDING, LAST_NAME_ASCENDING.
• request_sync_token / sync_token — optional. Incremental-sync controls.

What it returns

connections[] (people with only the masked fields), nextPageToken, totalItems, and nextSyncToken when requested.

What changes in Google Contacts

The tool reads Google Contacts data and does not change it.

Example request

List my contacts sorted by first name, 50 per page.

Errors and limitations

The API returns ONLY the masked fields — an absent field may simply be unmasked, not empty. Sync tokens expire after about 7 days: a 410 EXPIRED_SYNC_TOKEN means re-list in full. There is no text filter here. Access also depends on token permissions, quotas, and upstream API limits.

Related MCP tools

• Search contacts — search_contacts
• Get a contact — get_contact
• Get many contacts at once — batch_get_contacts

Technical details

• Impact: read-only
• Group: Contacts
• Description source: list_contacts registration in src/tools/contacts.ts
• Full technical reference
• All MCP capabilities