Sync your Google contacts and calender with Apple's address book and iCal – Very useful for Android devices

This article covers the syncing issues occurring when using Google’s calender and (Gmail-)contacts and Apple’s iCal and address book. This especially concerns Android users using a Mac, which is a nice combination One of the coolest features of Android phones is the syncing between your phone and Googles cloud online services (Gmail, calendar, contacts, …) As nice it is to have your most important data accessible from everywhere, it is more comfortable managing this data with native desktop apps which usually provide better usability; not to say Google’s services don’t have a neat usability.

Using both Google’s and Apple’s calendar and contacts applications makes sense in some ways.

Pros for using Apple’s iCal and address book:

• Very fast and stable
• Good usability
• If using an iPhone it’s a MUST

Pro’s for using Google’s calendar and contacts (Gmail contacts)

• Data can be accessed from every device in the world Internet connected
• Great sync with Android devices

Problem: Get Google’s “online” products synced with Apple’s “offline” desktop apps.

How to sync the contacts:

Apple has a build-in Feature that lets you sync the address book app but this feature is only enabled if you use an iPhone. With a simple trick this feature can enabled for non iPhone users as well.

If you once connected an iPod to your iTunes search for the file ‘com.apple.iPod.plist‘ in the following folder:

YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/  (‘YOURUSERNAME’ stands for your home directory)

Open ‘com.apple.iPod.plist‘ with PlistEdit Pro (shareware download) (or similar editor) and replace the value of field “Family ID” with 10001 as shown below. If there are more devices listed just replace the Family ID value under any device, doesn’t matter which one.

If you never connected an iPod to you Mac or the file ‘com.apple.iPod.plist‘ is missing do the following:

Open the TextEdit application and create a new text document containing the following text:

{ Devices = { red-herring = { ‘Family ID’ = 10001; }; }; }

name it: com.apple.iPod.plist (whilst .plist is the suffix of the file, not .txt or so!)

and place it into the directory shown above. ( YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/ )

Now, restart address book and go to “Preferences >> Sync with Google” and fill in your credentials.

To trigger the sync of your contacts download this script and double click on it. Place the script file to a directory that is useful for you eg. Applications

Click the script each time you want to sync or do it automatically like so:

To sync the contacts every time the computer starts go “System preferences >> User >> Start” click + and add the script file. Now your contacts are synced each time you start your mac. (Internet connection must be available right after start up.  This is the case if you just leave your wifi on or the lan cable plugged in.)

How to syncs the Calendars:

This is pretty simple by setting up CalDAV in Apple’s iCal.

1. In Apple iCal, go to Preferences >> Accounts
2. Click + button to add your Google account
3. Now enter your Google Account user name and password.
4. Expand Server Options and add the following:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/yourgoogleusername@gmail.com/userReplace ‘yourgoogleusername@gmail.com‘ with your Gmail address that you use to log in to Google calendar.
5. Click Add.
6. Under Delegation, select the calendars you’d like to add to iCal. Hit refresh.
7. Add your email address to Apples’s address book if prompted.