MacMost Now 867: Using Google Calendars With Mac and iOS

You can use a Google Calendar on Mac or your iOS device just as easily as you can use an iCloud calendar. There is no need to 'sync' between them as using one or the other is all that is needed. Google Calendars can be shared between your Mac, iOS, Android and Windows devices.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's look at using Goggle Calendar with your Mac and your iOS devices.
So when I get a questions about Goggle Calendar it is usually about how to sync a Goggle Calendar with an iCloud Calendar which doesn't make any sense. You see they are both cloud calendars. You can access both using any of your Mac or iOS devices. There is no need to sync across from one to the other. You just use one or the other.
For instance, here I am in the Calendar app on my Mac. I'm going to go ahead and add a new account. Now one of the types of accounts I can add is a Goggle account. Then I enter my Goggle email address, usually a Gmail address, and password and here it will give me an account summary of the calendar information. 
You can see in this case I am adding a calendar so it is not going to give me the option of adding mail or Notes. If I were to go to Systems Preferences and add this Goggle account then I could actually add it as a mail account for the mail app as well as a Notes account for the Notes app.
But in this case I'm just going to stick with it as just a calendar. Here you can see now I've got it just in my iCloud calendar I've got a Goggle calendar. If I close it and go back here you can see I had an event I created in this calendar for lunch today, and you can see it instantly appears here.
Now I'm going to create another event. So let's create it for tomorrow and let's create a meeting and you will see this will sync across when I sign up for this calendar in iOS.
So you can see here in iOS I'm going to go in, this is in the Settings app, I'm going to go to Mail, Contacts, and Calendars and I'm going to add an account here. I'm going to select a Gmail account and add the same account.
You can see now I've got selections here since I am in the Settings app I can have Mail and Notes and I'm going to turn those off because I am just going to use this Goggle account for Calendar here. Then I'm going to Save. Once I do that I will be able to, you can see it is added there, so now if I go to the Calendar app here I can see that under Calendars I've got it listed there as a Gmail calendar in addition to my other ones. I can see that I have that lunch for today and also that all day meeting for tomorrow.
So this is very useful for sharing calendar between two of more people. Say you and your spouse or you and a work group. You can set up a Goggle account just to hold this calendar and everybody can have the password to it and have it as one of the accounts they have on their device.
Goggle calendars are outside of Apple's eco system so that means in addition to working on Macs and on iOS they also work on Android phones, on Windows PC. Anything that has a client that can take a standard cloud based calendar.
So this is useful for just one person if say you have an Android phone and a Mac. Or say you have an iPhone and a Windows PC and you want to stick with using calendar client apps. If you don't want to use iCloud's web base interface on the device if it doesn't have a client that can handle iCloud. So you can use it for that.
Most importantly the thing I'm trying to get across is there is never reason to have to sync a Goggle calendar with an iCloud calendar. If you are going to use a Goggle calendar say because you want compatibility to non-Apple devices then just use the Goggle calendar. It works great on all Apple devices and there is no reason to use an iCloud calendar.
So you can still use iCloud for email. You can still have an iCloud calendar that is your own and you can just use a separate Goggle calendar for things that you need to use that one for.
So I hope you found this useful. Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 15 Responses to “MacMost Now 867: Using Google Calendars With Mac and iOS”

Marty

12 years ago

Gary: I'm a huge fan but can't agree with you about not need to synch ical and google calendars, and wish you would explain how. I really like ical and with a Mac, iPhone and iPad, am very happy with ical and don't won't to change. But I use google as a home screen and there's a link to calendar on top, so if I'm on a google page and think of something I want to add to my calendar, it would be easier to add it to the google calendar if it would synch, then closing google and opening ical. Thx.

Gary Rosenzweig

I think you are missing my point. You don't need to leave iCal. You can use iCal with Google Calendar. You can update a Google Calendar from both the Web and iCal. You can get what you want without needing to sync. Syncing would just make it more complex, with no real benefit.

Helene

I use both the google calendar and the iCal. The only problem I have is that if I delete something from the google calendar, it does not get deleted from the iCal. Additions work, just not the deletions.

That's odd. And you are using it just like I describe in the video -- not using some "syncing" app? Perhaps you aren't waiting long enough. I would expect it sometimes takes up to 15 minutes to check for updates.

Nonnie

But will it sync with MS Entourage 2008 or Outlook 2011?

"Sync" is the wrong term to use. You want to access the Google Calendar using your calendar app, just you would access a web page with a browser or cloud email with an email client.
Not sure if Entourage or Outlook allow you to access Google Calendars. Try it. If they can access standard CalDAV (the name of the protocol Google uses) calendars, then probably.

Franck

Thanks Gary, I use my Google Calendar with any device I want, including iPhone, iPad and Galaxy Note, exactly as you describe here, and it works like a charm, without syncing, it's in the air, it's in the cloud.

Genie

11 years ago

Very clear video and I think it will solve the problems my co-worker and I are having. Question: how can we populate a new google calendar with the appointments we already have in our separate ical calendars? Is it possible to do?

Set up the new and old calendars in the Calendar app on your Mac. Then select the events and Control+Click on them and switch which calendar they are on.

Really appreciate the quick response. One more twist. I already have a gmail account set up in Calendar/iCal. The calendar I want to add I have in iCloud. Seems like it best to add it to gmail/google instead? Then move the appointments one by one or can they be done en masse using the Control+Click?

You can select multiple events and the Control+Click seems to work. Try it.

Danny Low

Gary, can I use the same method for getting the same contacts for my mac, iCloud, Gmail and IOS devices as well. Tks

I don't think Google contacts sync across devices. I don't think that is an option like it is with calendars. But try it.

Hi Gary, I tried but sad to say it did not work for contacts. Hope that you let me know if you find anything possible means. Tks

Did you try this?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4872

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 867: Using Google Calendars With Mac and iOS

Comments: 15 Responses to “MacMost Now 867: Using Google Calendars With Mac and iOS”

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