Sync Google Calendar with iCal

Apr 22, 2011 - 9 Comments

sync Google Calendar to iCal

I use Google Calendar for a myriad of reasons but since it picks up dates easily from Gmail it’s especially useful for me. Yet, somehow I never thought to sync it with iCal. If you use Google Calendar, why not sync it to your Mac? Setting this up is very simple:

  • Launch iCal
  • Open iCal Preferences from the iCal menu
  • Click the Accounts button
  • Click on the + icon in the lower left corner of the window to add an account
  • Enter your Google credentials and click on Create

You can keep the import settings on Automatic, although setting to Google seems to speed up the first time the calendars are synced. iCal will contact Google for you and grab all the information, there’s nothing else to do.

Now you can add events from iCal and the Mail app on your Mac, or Gmail and Google Calendar from anywhere else, and you’ll always have the same date and event information regardless of where or what you’re checking your calendar from. Don’t forget that you can add Google Calendar support to your iPhone or iPad too.

.

Related articles:

Posted by: Jeff Hurst in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

9 Comments

» Comments RSS Feed

  1. Sportymonk says:

    Never mind. Just found I forgot to turn Google Cal on in the iCal Calendars section. Still doesn’t synch from iCal to Google which is what I need.

  2. Sportymonk says:

    Just tried and it doesn’t work. iCal doens’t show up in Google Calendar and Google Calendar doesn’t show up in iCal although the Google alarm did go off on iCal??

  3. mtnbimmer says:

    Followed the “simple” steps and it does not work. None of my iCal events show up in my Google calendar.

  4. Gary says:

    I followed the steps, the setup went fine accepted my credentials but the data from iCal is not syncing to google calendar. Any suggestions?

  5. bobby says:

    does this also sync with google tasks and the ical tasks bar?

  6. I am using ical on Mac, ipad, iphone and icloud, however to schedule work to colleagues, I want to use a common platform like google calendars. I want each person to be able to view a single calendar, add to it, so we all know what we are up to and where we are. They are using blackberry and pc’s, so icloud is not an option really – can you suggest if this will work for google / ical?

  7. Dieter says:

    Hi,

    does this also work in the direction ical to google calendar, e.g. so far I used only ical.

    Thanks

  8. carlitos says:

    what about security? is this sending my google password in clear text?

  9. chris says:

    “If you use Google Calendar, why not sync it to your Mac?”

    Because of Google Calendar’s incomplete support for CalDAV and not mapping event fields one-to-one, dropping of multiple alarms “just because” and randomly, not mapping dependent calendars the same way iCal does, occasional and random server timeouts, not mapping calendar colors…

    Google Calendar kind of sucks, and I pay for a Premier Apps account – and I’m looking to port out soon…

Leave a Reply

 

Shop on Amazon.com and help support OSXDaily!

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site