Jul

04

Three way syncing with a Mac, Google Calendar, and iPhone 3.0 using CalDAV.

Posted by Bush Williams | Posted in Calendaring, Mac, iPhone | Posted on 04-07-2009

One of my favorite features of iPhone 3.0 is CalDAV integration. For anyone who isn’t already familiar with this feature, it will allow syncing of a Google Calendar between Google, your iPhone, and your Macs or any combination of the three. This means that you can log into Google Calendar and create an event, and from there it will appear over the air on any device you have setup with CalDAV. This also means that you can edit that same event on your iPhone or Mac and it will immediately publish to Google Calendar as well. Basically one Calendar entry from any point and that entry will appear everywhere, over the air, with no syncing. It is fantastic.

I am going to go through this in two steps. The first step is how to setup CalDAV on your Mac, the second, on your iPhone. Keep in mind that both of these steps require that you have already browsed to www.google.com/calendar and created at least one for us to work with. Once this Google Calendar is ready to go, browse out to http://code.google.com/p/calaboration/ and download the Collaboration Tool and install it.  Now, with that out of the way, on to the fun part.

 

  1. Make sure that iCal on your Mac is closed and launch the Collaboration tool you just downloaded.  The tool will ask for your Google login info and then ask you which calendars you want to sync.  Once you have provided this info, you can launch iCal and you will see your Google Calendar is now available.  Thats it, its just that simple.  You can now enter iCal and create an entry and save it, lets call it “Test Event”.  You can now browse back out to www.google.com/Calendar and you will notice that you can now see that “Test Event” is on your calendar.  It has already synced up with Google.  Go ahead and change the date on that “Test Event” from your browser and save it.  Now click back over to iCal, right click your CalDav Calendar and click “Refresh”.  You will see that “Test Event” reflects the changes you just made online and has moved to the new date.
  2. Now, your Mac is all synced up with Google, how cool will it be to add that same feature to your iPhone.  This will allow you create or edit an event from your phone, which will push that update to your Google Calendar which will in turn, push it back to your Mac, or vise versa.  Real Time, Calendar updates over the air to all of your Apple Devices.  Brilliant.  Now, go ahead and open the “Settings” app on your iPhone and browse down to “Mail, Contacts, and Calendars”.  From here, we want to click “Add Accounts…” and choose “other”.  You will now see an option for “Add CalDAV Account”.  Touch that and the CalDAV account menu will open.  Enter your Google Account info:

iPhone Setup

  1. Server: www.google.com
  2. User Name: youraccount@Gmail.com
  3. Password: the password for your Gmail Account
  4. Description: Whatever you want to name this Calendar.
  5. Click “Next” and your account info will be verified
  6. Press the home button and Open up iCal
  7. Give the phone a few seconds to pull down your Calendar data and then browse over to your “Test Event”  Lets Delete this event and conclude our setup.  You can now browse to Google.com/Calendar and find that “Test Event” is gone.  It will have also vanished from your Mac as well.
Now, for a few slightly more complex things to keep in mind.  If you know other people using Google Calendars who have iPhones or Macs, (my wife and I both have our own Google Cal, our own Macs, and our own iPhones for example).  You can create another calendar on Google.com/Calendars and from the “Settings” link on the Google Calendar Website, you can give various permissions to other @Gmail accounts to view and modify your Calendars.  This could be very useful if you would like to share a calendar with your significant other, your team mates, or your office.  My wife and I share a “Family Calendar” and we are able to schedule for or see what the other is doing at all times and make updates on the fly that will be pushed to our devices as soon as the update is made.  The possibilities with CalDAV are fairly endless and it has plenty of room to breathe to fit your individual demands be they personal or professional.  I really enjoy this feature and hope this little tutorial was useful, don’t forget to leave some feedback with any questions or complaints about this process, I would love to hear from you.

 

 

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