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July 28, 2008

internet

Google Calendar now syncs with iCal, for free

Posted Jul. 28, ’08, 9:59 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Internet

goocal.jpgHoly Crow T. Robot! It seems that our own Aaron Freedman’s prayers have been answered. Aaron’s long been on the lookout for a free way to sync his Google Calendar with iCal, and while he’s tried a bunch of different solutions, none of them have quite met his rigorous criteria.

But that was before Google themselves stepped into the ring. The Goog has now enabled the ability to access your Google Calendar via iCal—with full sync support (caveat: this only works with the Leopard version of iCal). Create an event in iCal and it’ll show up in your Google Calendar and vice versa. The steps for setting it up are pretty straightforward, though you might want to know that there are still some known issues: for example, event reminders and notifications don’t sync yet (they’re a function of the calendar that you create the event on) and you can’t create To Do items on Google Calendars yet. You can, however, set up multiple calendars, though the process is a marginally more involved.

Still, it’s a promising move for those who rely on their Google Calendar but want the convenience of iCal. Personally, I’ve never been a regular user, especially now that MobileMe offers push calendars, but I know there’ll be a lot of people pleased by this development. Perhaps even you!


7 Comments

Rob S said:

Works great. Only problem is that unlike MobileMe you can't edit the items on your iPhone/iTouch. Only events created on your device or in a local calendar can be edited on your device..

July 28, 2008 2:25 PM
Grant said:

I'm guessing this must only work on Leopard? I'm on Tiger and there is no Accounts tab in iCal's preferences.

July 28, 2008 5:29 PM
Anonymous said:

Your main link to the article "now enabled the ability to access your Google Calendar via iCal" goes to a Google foreign language page...

July 28, 2008 5:34 PM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@Grant: Whoops, yes. Leopard version of iCal only. Apologies for not mentioning that in piece; I'll fix it.

July 28, 2008 8:32 PM
iPim said:

I used already the 1-way sync possibility from outlook to google cal to ical. I'm certainly going to try this 2-way sync.
Now still something to sync my contacts between outlook and address book

July 28, 2008 11:38 PM
Chris B said:

There is also a sync solution that has been free for about a week now called Calgoo. It syncs ical and google (as well as 30 boxes cal) and will do it with either Tiger or Leopard. According to their blog their calendar sharing thing also just added CalDAV. www.calgoo.com

-CB

July 29, 2008 9:41 AM
Dom said:

Tried to sync two ways but it doesn't work, it tells me that it cannot find the calendar

any advice ?

August 30, 2008 8:02 AM

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