Sync iCal and iPhone with Google Calendar

Google launched today Google Sync, a serive that allows you to sync the contacts and calendar in your Google account with your computers and mobile devices.

I wanted to sync my iPhone with my Google Calendar and Contacts, so I adventured myself with Google Sync. It’s not difficult to do it, just follow the instructions here very carefully.

After that, all went well but I wanted two other things working for full bliss: sync all my Google Calendars with my iPhone and my Mac’s iCal. Confused? Well, when I used Google Sync with my iPhone, it only synced my default Google Calendar, I had to access http://m.google.com/sync with my iPhone and specify which callendars I wanted to sync. Easy.

Syncing my Google Calendars with iCal was a little bit more trickyer, but found this article in Google help, that actually did all the work for me. This allows iCal to use CalDAV to access all your Google Calendars. You can configure the settings manually in iCal’s preferences or use Calaboration to automate it.

So, now I have all my Google Mail, Contacts and Calendar synced with my iPhone and Mac 🙂 All this for free. It’s getting hard for Apple to justify a paid MobileMe

Hope this helps!

User Input

  • Dale H says:

    I followed this advice and what I’m left with is zero entries in my iPhone contact list, phone directory and iCal. Now, I’m desperately trying to figure out how to get my info back. I’ve lost my ability to re-sync my info in my Macbook thru iTunes because those check boxes have gone away. I can access my google calender thru Safari in my iPhone but not my contacts. I don’t want a webpage calender or contacts list. I want the apps in the iPhone to do what they are designed to do. This didn’t work out the way I expected at all!

  • Odrakir says:

    Hi Dale,

    somewhere in the Google Sync site, they explain also how to backup first before actually doing the procedure. Google Sync allows you to “use” your contacts and calendar in Google as your main source, disabling iTunes syncing for your Mac’s Cal and Contacts. But it’s a two way sync, if you still have the contacts and calendar in Google you can have them back on your iPhone.

  • Hugo Sousa says:

    Hey dude!
    This was probably the second or third thing I did after I turned on the iPhone… I remembered your post and came to check it out again!

    Just followed the link and Google’s instructions were perfect… I’m so happy to see Calendar and Contacts all pimped out on the iPhone’s interface! It even allows you to set the alarm from gcalendar’s interface! AWESOME!

    PS: I kill u :>

  • Joe Robinson says:

    How can I sync my calendar events from my iphone (entered there) to Google Calendar and/or iCal?

  • Steve says:

    Thanks Odrakir, I just (finally) got my iPhone after letting my Verizon contract die, went looking for a way to synch contacts so I wouldn’t have to type all the info into the iPhone, and found exactly what I needed here. Sure, I mostly needed the info from Google, but they didn’t show up as high in the search results… a bit ironic, eh? 😉

    Anyway, cheers for the help, keep up the good work