Keep iCal and GCal in Sync For Free
The blogs have been buzzing as of late about Google’s introduction of the CalDAV protocol into its Google Calendar service. For those of who who live on the planet Jupiter, Google Calendar is the excellent free online calendar service that resides in the cloud. One of the major trends in technology is maintaining a connection between apps in the cloud, and apps on your physical machine. With the introduction of CalDAV to Google Calendar, it’s never been easier to keep iCal and Google Calendar in sync, let alone for free.
For the people that don’t feel like shelling out for Apple’s push-enabled MobileMe service, Google offers a highly competitive set of services that rival Apple’s. For the low price of $0.00, you can have all of your iCal appointments synced up to the cloud. Additionally, any changes you make to Google Calendar online will be pushed down to your iCal calendar on your Mac. While it doesn’t offer the same instantaneous changes as MobileMe claims to offer, the 15 minute interval default sync time should be more than enough for some.
Integrating Google Calendar with iCal is as simple as adding an account to your iCal preferences. After you open the preferences in iCal, click on the Accounts tab. Hit the “+” button to get the “Add an Account” dialog box. For the username option, put in your full Gmail address (including the @gmail.com), followed by your password. Additionally, you have to put in the address for the Account URL. This address can be found here: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[YOUR USERNAME]/user (just replace the [YOUR USERNAME] with your own Gmail address). Again, this should include the “@gmail.com” at the end of it.
After following those simple steps, you should be up and running. You can sync manually by clicking Command+R and you can also change the sync interval. With the iPhone Google interface, and Google Sync app for BlackBerry, you can truly have your calendars in sync everywhere. I have a strong feeling that Apple will allow native syncing to the iPhone with a future update. That would make it even easier to make sure that you never have a reason for missing an appointment again.
This doesn’t work nearly as well as I had hoped. It only syncs once calendar and it’s not an existing calendar, you have to put events in from scratch. Or am I missing a setting?
Yes I agree with the previous post. Does anyone know how to sync multiple Google Calendars?
Thank you.
I’ll stick with BusySync – http://www.busymac.com. It’s been fast and reliable for me. Does multiple calendars, LAN and costs less than SpanningSync.
You can sync multiple calendars. Here’s a link to how-to:
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99358
The problem is there is a know issue where your default calendar won’t sync both ways (only from iCal to Google calendar). Google says this is an Apple problem so it may not be fixed anytime soon (then people wouldn’t use Mobileme).
Btw Calgoo Connect is free now. It can sync multiple calendars both ways and it has been working great for me.
http://www.calgoo.com
Syncing multiple calendars is really easy. Just add each calendar as a separate account. It works perfectly.
There’s full instructions at:
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99358
Look at the bottom section entitled “Add secondary calendars”
Dermah – You can use existing calendars perfectly easily, no need to have to make a new calendar.
Another feature you don’t mention here is that now your calendars are in iCal, you can use iSync to update them to your mobile phone. I haven’t tried syncing back from my phone to the calendar but frankly I would never do that anyway.
Jon
This is for Leopard only
Not very useful until multiple calendars can be sync on one account. I don’t like anymore clutter than necessary in ical.
[...] iCal and GCal in Sync For Free Keep iCal and GCal in Sync For Free: [...]
Jake said:
Not very useful until multiple calendars can be sync on one account. I don't like anymore clutter than necessary in ical.
—
Jonathan M said:
Syncing multiple calendars is really easy. Just add each calendar as a separate account. It works perfectly.
There's full instructions at:
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99358
Look at the bottom section entitled “Add secondary calendars
—
Jake, I just tried this and it works fine! I have 3 calendars from my Google account in iCal, plus my wife’s account (which I have permissions to access).
- Jeff
It is a nice thing if you want to manage a public calendar over google and iCal but for everything else it is useless.
Thanks for the tip! i like it and i will activate it right now!
I’ve successfully added 2 primary Gcal calendars (mine and my wifes) to iCal, but they don’t sync 2-way.
Also, I’ve tried adding one secondary calendar, but it keeps asking for the password (I’ve made it public in gCal settings.
Apparently this only works in limited situations. And mobilme SUCKS. Oh well.
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For those confused by the options and multiple calendars – Google have released a tool to set it all up for you based on your Google Apps login:
http://code.google.com/p/calaboration/downloads/list
Worked for me without a hitch, and on a Google Apps for Business account as well.
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I couldn’t see this:
“Look at the bottom section entitled Add secondary calendars”
However I found a different solution here:
Syncing Your Current iCal Calendars With Google Calendar
http://andrew.harrison.org/notes/ical-gcal-sync
Is it possible to make gcal send an email each time theres made a change in the calendar?
We have a calendar that we share between 10 people. If one adds something it would be great for all the others to automatically receive an email with the changes. In that way we don’t need to check that cal. daily.
I could sync the gcal with my ical. the ical has this “automatic notification on changes- feature”
- nut isn’t there a direct way using only gcal?
thanks!
Thank You SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Much!
I just wanted to throw out a little something I ran into. When Google calendar is open in a browser iCal can not find the calendar. Closing the window solves the problem. Hope this helps. Also it is possible to receive e-mail notification to changed invitations on Google calendar. It is under settings then notifications for each individual calendars I have only used it a couple of times but it seems to work well.
[...] Keep iCal and GCal in Sync For Free | MacApper * how to sync your iCal and your gCal – the best of both world? (tags: osx mac gcal ical) [...]
While what you suggest is one way of tackling this problem. I struggled to find a reliable way to do this.
What I found was that SpanningSync was the best means for keeping my address book, ical, gcal and iPhone in sync.
Well worth the (I think) 30 I paid for it.
This is all great but I’m having a bit of an issue and can’t find any help anywhere, so if anyone has any advice, it would be very much appreciated.
What I’m trying to sync is an iPhone app 2Do ([http://2doapp.com], which is really good by the way) which syncs with my iCal calendar.
From here I want to sync iCal to Google Calendar, so in turn I can then sync Google Calendar with my Outlook Calendar at work.
Before anyone see’s there the 2Do Outlook sync on the app website, there is no wireless network at work so I have to go through this route
So far I’m just dealing with the iCal to Google Calendar and the problem I’m having is that when I’ve synced the 2Do app tasks & calendar it makes them as normal iCal calendars. So is there any way to sync existing iCal calendars with Google Calendar? If possible I’d like to not use a 3rd party app but if thats the only way I will.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks Harish, for recommending the resource. It will really help me a lot.
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I have OS 10.6 and want to sync a group of calendars on iCal up to gmail. I was able to sync 1 gCal calendar with iCal; but that doesn’t help me too much when what I really want to do is to sync my iCal group up into gmail (and then be able to edit on either gmail or iCal).
Some of what I have tried is:
1) imported the group into one of my gCal’s, that works–but it does not sync any modifications either on gCal or on iMail
2) I followed the instructions on this website (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=4e5c309678c75983&hl=en) and was able to sync one gCal to my iCal and changes on that calendar are syncing on both sides–but that doesn’t help when what I want to do is edit my “group” of calendars on iCal and have THAT sync up to a calendar in gCal…
I’d love some input as I don’t know what more to do…
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