To sync Facebook profile pictures to contacts, you must first make sure that your contacts are indeed connected to Facebook. The easiest way to do this is by looking at the contact information screen, which will show a Facebook Profile link if contact information is taken from Facebook. If this is not the case with a contact, you can navigate to the Edit Contact screen, tap the Menu button and tap Join, and join your phone’s contact with the appropriate Facebook account.
It seems that Facebook has recently stopped automatically synchronizing contact pictures to Android’s contact list. Even when contacts are clearly linked to Facebook, their profile pictures don’t show as the default contact photo.
A workaround was found to force your phone to download the Facebook contact photos:
- Open the Facebook App
- Tap the navigation menu at the top left
- Select Friends
- Scroll to the bottom of your friend list and wait
Your phone will load each of your friends’ profile picture in alphabetical order. When you see photos showing for friends at the bottom of the list, you’ll notice that you can scroll up and see everyone’s cached Facebook profile picture.
When you go back to your phone’s contact list, you’ll see that the downloaded photos have been added to all contacts connected with Facebook.
