How-To: Use Facebook to Assign Address Book Photos

AddressBookSyncIconIn theory, the idea of having a photo assigned to each Address Book entry is both smart and simple. Make sure you remember the right face with the right name. It’s incredibly handy if you also have an iPod Touch or iPhone. However, dragging and dropping hundreds (if not thousands) of photos onto names in your Mac Address Book? Tedious and ineffective.

In today’s MacApper How-To, we’re going to show you a little app to bridge the divide between Facebook and your Apple Address Book.

1) Head on over to the Apple.com downloads section, and grab a handy little app called AddressBookSync.

2) Once you’ve downloaded the disk image, and dragged it to your Applications folder, go ahead and launch the app. Upon launch you’ll be prompted to give it access to your Facebook account via Facebook Connect.

3) Once you connect, the app should start downloading your friends list, and comparing any names within Address Book to your friends list. AddressBookSync will also download your friend’s current profile pictures, and show them side-by-side with the current picture you have assigned to them in Address Book (if any).

4) Hit “Sync to Address Book,” and all of the photos will be assigned in Address Book.

addressbooksync

You can feel free to trash the app once finished, but I suggest keeping it around. That way you can keep photos up-to-date for all of your contacts. Facebook’s TOS prevent developers from calling other useful info like e-mails, screennames, and phone numbers through the API (likely out of privacy concerns), but getting the photos is a definite first step. No more digging through photos and cropping!

Comments

9 Responses to “How-To: Use Facebook to Assign Address Book Photos”

  1. snio on November 3rd, 2009 1:46 am

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  2. Murray on November 9th, 2009 2:50 pm

    I agree about the quality of this site..I’ve had a shortcut saved on my bookmarks bar for a year or so…but it’s about to be removed. New content on this site is pretty much non existent…so much so I’m wondering if it’s been abandoned.

  3. Chet on November 14th, 2009 7:33 am

    Has this site completely gone off syndication?

  4. Murray on November 16th, 2009 4:14 pm

    Sure looks that way…I”m just now removing the link from my Bookmarks Bar…I’m gone for good,

  5. artyom-kurapov on November 22nd, 2009 4:04 am

    ??????????? ?????????????? – ?????????????? ???????????? ?????: ??????????? ??????????.

  6. Steve Ballmer on November 22nd, 2009 12:14 pm

    Bad idea here!

  7. google sniper on December 28th, 2009 12:29 am

    I don’t think so? has this product gone idle now? I cant’ seem to sync to my address book anymore..

  8. country guitar lessons on December 29th, 2009 7:15 am

    I figured out how to sync it to my address book, but that’s not the solution to a strange issue I had pop up recently :( I think my battery is shot.

  9. Krishen on December 31st, 2009 5:10 pm

    Great tip, thanks! Took about 10 minutes to grab all my FB contact photos, but it worked!

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