Apple has changed the way calendars sync in Mavericks. Here’s how to sync your Apple Calendar App with an existing Google calendar. You can’t use an iCloud based calendar to sync with Google.
You need to start from Google and go the other way. Apple can see the gmail calendar but not the other way round. Introduction You might be wondering why someone would want to even use a Google calendar now that Apple Calendar does everything You can share your Apple Calendar with other people. You can subscribe to other people’s Apple Calendars. You can even allow other people to edit your calendars. So why would you even bother with a Google calendar any more?
Well The Apple calendar does not allow you to embed a calendar in a website. (Like I have done for our church calendar.) So if you ‘publish’ your calendar, the other person has to view your calendar from within their Apple calendar app. They cannot look at it in a web browser. The simplest way to have a calendar published on a website but editable in Apple Calendar is to use a Google calendar. Using this method the calendar info is hosted by Google, not Apple, but the calendar is viewable and editable in Apple Calendar. Adding a google calendar to Apple calendar is the easy in OS X Mavericks.
There are no.ics files or messy webcal:// addresses needed. All you need is your google email address and password.
CREATE YOUR GOOGLE CALENDAR 1. If you don’t already have a Google calendar, describes how to set up a Google calendar. You can then embed that Google Calendar in any website according to. ADD YOUR GOOGLE CALENDAR TO APPLE CALENDAR Here’s how to add the Google calendar to Apple calendar app.
This full-fledged app packs Gmail and a handful of other Google apps into a single interface. Of course, the default layout displays your Gmail inbox. You can jump to Google Drive, Docs, Contacts, and Calendar, or create new entries in these apps via the left sidebar.
A number of people can do this so that they can all edit the same calendar if you want. On your Macintosh go to ‘System Preferences’ and Click on ‘Internet Accounts’. (This is different to previous versions of OSX where you did it from within Calendar settings. In System Preferences find ‘Internet Accounts’ 2. Click on ‘Google’ to add your Google account. Enter your Gmail settings for the account that has the Google calendar. You will need your Google email address and password.
(The ‘Name:’ can be anything.) 4. Click ‘Set Up’ and then make sure ‘calendars’ is selected. All the calendars from that Gmail account will now appear in your Apple Calendar. You can ‘connect’ to multiple Gmail accounts and multiple calendars. You can turn them on and off by checking or un-checking the checkbox next to the calendar. The Gmail calendars will now appear alongside your iCloud calendars – toggle their visibility with the checkbox. If you do not see this window, click on the ‘Calendars’ button on the top left of your Calendar app window. When you edit your Gmail calendar in the Apple calendar app the changes will automatically be uploaded to the Google account calendar.
If the Google calendar is published on a website, the changes will automatically go from the Apple Calendar to the Google calendar and then to the website. Nice article. Your method works well.
Have you been able to get your iCloud calendars to sync up to a Google calendar? Imagine you have two iCloud Calendars, Two Exchange Calendars and you manage all of them using the desktop app Apple Calendar. You also have all of them synced up to your iPhone and iPad. Now all you want is to display all of them on a web page so folks can see your availability. This use to be possible pre-Mavericks by publishing each of the calendars to Google and then publishing the Google calendar to the web. If you can solve that you’ll make a lot of folks happy.
Wayne, Great write-up and thanks for getting it out there! I’ve been using Google calendar for quite some time in order to keep track of work and family. Honestly, my usage isn’t terribly elaborate or complex, but I’m still working to simplify things more. Currently, I’m using Fantastical to punch in fast entries from my mobile devices and things are just fine there. Only trouble I have is figuring out what app I should be running on the OSX side.
Fantastical is there but it only works in the menu bar. Since I’ve no use (that I’m aware of now) for posting my calendar to my website, do you recommend sticking with Google or maybe rolling back to a strait iCal system?
Thanks, Chawn. You can update the calendar on your iPhone and the update shows up on the Google calendar. I’m not sure how that’s not a sync. And if you want more than one calendar, just make another Google calendar. I guess what this post is attempting to describe is a work-around for the fact that Apple prevent you from syncing with Google calendar.
You can’t use an iCloud based calendar to sync because Apple don’t want to play nicely with Google. You need to start from Google and go the other way They are doing to Google what Microsoft did to Apple in the 90’s when Apple could read PC floppy disks but Microsoft wouldn’t read Apple disks. It’s a shame Apple didn’t learn from that experience! Thankfully Google try to play nicely with everyone. I was able to sync the two by adding the account through iCal preferences and syncing my Gmail account as indicated above.
My appointments made in Google Calendar showed up, but there were some “triangle +!” error messages that were annoying. I went through google help and followed this link — my correct info was already selected so I just saved it and the errors went away! My google calendar events all show up in iCal now–but as posters said, not the other way around. It seems like you have to export/import iCal into Google Calendar, but I haven’t fully looked into that. To the author of this article: Are you really that stupid? You’re questioning the use of google calendar. Every argument you use for using Apple calendar is also available in google calendar.
The only difference is that with a google calendar you can do all of those things on EVERY device you want. You can share, view, edit, with everyone on every device. And now you’re making some workaround because of the incapabilities of the apple calendar I think it’s time for you to throw away those blinkers.
Actually, Apple doesn’t have much love for anyone except Apple, and isn’t playing nicely with anyone except Apple. It is not a matter of Apple not learning from that past experience with Microsoft: it is a matter of Apple making every deliberate choice to trap users in an exclusively Apple environnement. The only way to teach them is to go to that conclusion: if you have made a step out of the Apple environnement (to free – as in freemind or freespeach – OS and soft for instance), then do the full walk toward an exclusively not Apple environnement at least untill they act more friendly to others!!!
Get organized on the go with the Google Calendar app. Pianoman.82, Recent updates have seriously ruined this app After a few months of very laggy, unresponsive, disappointing app behavior, I finally have had enough to leave a review in the hopes that it will help someone on the app team realize just how bad things have gotten, at least for me (my wife has the same issues on her iOS devices as well, so it’s not something unique to my account). I was surprised to see how many other reviews I have found with almost exactly the same issues that I have. The fact that the other reviewers have been reporting consistently issues since at least the beginning of 2018 with no improvement is nearly inexcusable. My primary issues in a nutshell - 1) often app opens to random dates at initial launch; 2) after initial app load, it generally takes 60-90 seconds (sometimes much longer) before the UI is responsive; 3) once everything has finally loaded (if I have not given up and force quit it already) there is way too much UI lag and sputtering as I try to navigate through different UI views — full month, daily agenda, etc. These issues combined render the app nearly useless for me in most everyday use cases. As an app developer myself, I can appreciate the complexity of creating a performant, well-functioning app.
However, given how awesome this app used to be, and the level of satisfaction I expect from an app by Google, I’m just so frustrated and disappointed. I can’t understand why these issues have not received attention yet. Pianoman.82, Recent updates have seriously ruined this app After a few months of very laggy, unresponsive, disappointing app behavior, I finally have had enough to leave a review in the hopes that it will help someone on the app team realize just how bad things have gotten, at least for me (my wife has the same issues on her iOS devices as well, so it’s not something unique to my account). I was surprised to see how many other reviews I have found with almost exactly the same issues that I have.
The fact that the other reviewers have been reporting consistently issues since at least the beginning of 2018 with no improvement is nearly inexcusable. My primary issues in a nutshell - 1) often app opens to random dates at initial launch; 2) after initial app load, it generally takes 60-90 seconds (sometimes much longer) before the UI is responsive; 3) once everything has finally loaded (if I have not given up and force quit it already) there is way too much UI lag and sputtering as I try to navigate through different UI views — full month, daily agenda, etc. These issues combined render the app nearly useless for me in most everyday use cases. As an app developer myself, I can appreciate the complexity of creating a performant, well-functioning app. However, given how awesome this app used to be, and the level of satisfaction I expect from an app by Google, I’m just so frustrated and disappointed.
I can’t understand why these issues have not received attention yet. Colton2077, I like it, but it needs improvement This app is one of the most comprehensive as far as what I can do, but it needs fixing in a few areas. First of all, Goals are super glitchy and need improvement. I find that it’s super inconvenient that there is no option to select Goal time/date manually, you have to let the app decide for you. You can change manually it AFTER it is auto assigned, but you have to do them each individually.
So if I have a 5 day workout goal and I want them all to be at specific times, I have to manually fix every single day and time to where I want it. It’s super inconvenient. It should simply be an option and nothing more to have the app select times and dates for your goals. Additionally, I find that sometimes they delete themselves, and also, if you set a goal it only lasts about three weeks before you have to recreate them again. You should be able to have the option to select the cut off date or have them running indefinitely, like you can with “Events.” It’s almost better to set your Goals as Events because Events actually works. Additionally, I find that when I swipe other to the next week it will sometimes ship months or years ahead for seemingly no reason.
Colton2077, I like it, but it needs improvement This app is one of the most comprehensive as far as what I can do, but it needs fixing in a few areas. First of all, Goals are super glitchy and need improvement. I find that it’s super inconvenient that there is no option to select Goal time/date manually, you have to let the app decide for you.
You can change manually it AFTER it is auto assigned, but you have to do them each individually. So if I have a 5 day workout goal and I want them all to be at specific times, I have to manually fix every single day and time to where I want it. It’s super inconvenient. It should simply be an option and nothing more to have the app select times and dates for your goals. Additionally, I find that sometimes they delete themselves, and also, if you set a goal it only lasts about three weeks before you have to recreate them again.
You should be able to have the option to select the cut off date or have them running indefinitely, like you can with “Events.” It’s almost better to set your Goals as Events because Events actually works. Additionally, I find that when I swipe other to the next week it will sometimes ship months or years ahead for seemingly no reason. LynxOnSmoothies, RATING: Avoid this App I’m not normally a harsh reviewer. I like to believe there is an upside to almost any app. However, this app is barely functional as a calendar. Changing events causes crazy chugging in the app, occasionally it will force quit you out of a menu, it has to pause for a loading circle every two seconds, and it sometimes just LOSES events. All of that defeats the purpose of a calendar app (and other apps have worked fine, so it’s not my phone).
Unfortunately, the mess doesn’t end there. You cannot edit much of the calendar settings through it, there is no way to prevent it from overwriting an event with a goal—which it does, OFTEN—and goals will get scheduled at crazy times. Hate to inform you, but my workout is not going to be at 2am or in the center of my meeting.
You cannot even prevent it, as there is no way to lock hours or events to make them exclusive. On top of this, events loaded in from elsewhere often glitch and go crazy places, despite having the correct time tag and zone. While the ideas and concepts are there, this app has little practical functionality for anyone looking for a reasonable schedule, free of 2 am workouts, or for a way to keep track of important events. Until they fix basically all of the advertised functions, this is a firm AVOID THIS APP.
LynxOnSmoothies, RATING: Avoid this App I’m not normally a harsh reviewer. I like to believe there is an upside to almost any app. However, this app is barely functional as a calendar. Changing events causes crazy chugging in the app, occasionally it will force quit you out of a menu, it has to pause for a loading circle every two seconds, and it sometimes just LOSES events. All of that defeats the purpose of a calendar app (and other apps have worked fine, so it’s not my phone).
Unfortunately, the mess doesn’t end there. You cannot edit much of the calendar settings through it, there is no way to prevent it from overwriting an event with a goal—which it does, OFTEN—and goals will get scheduled at crazy times. Hate to inform you, but my workout is not going to be at 2am or in the center of my meeting.
You cannot even prevent it, as there is no way to lock hours or events to make them exclusive. On top of this, events loaded in from elsewhere often glitch and go crazy places, despite having the correct time tag and zone. While the ideas and concepts are there, this app has little practical functionality for anyone looking for a reasonable schedule, free of 2 am workouts, or for a way to keep track of important events. Until they fix basically all of the advertised functions, this is a firm AVOID THIS APP.