How do you syncronize Google Calendar and iCal?

Question

How do you sync your Google Calendar with iCal? Do you use any third party software or the CalDAV protocol?

The ability to perform a 2-way sync is a requirement. The ability to sync multiple iCal calendars with multiple Google Calendars is a bonus.

Note. I would prefer a solution based on experience, I can search Google. I already use BusySync but I'm always looking for better solutions.

Answer 1

have a look at http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99358#ical

it lets you view and edit google calendars in iCal

Answer 2

Very much interested in the question myself. You probably know that you any Google Calendar comes with its ICal file that you can reference from third-party apps. But the feed leaks more information than as per the original calendar's privacy settings. And Google's VFREEBUSY feed just doesn't do what it's meant to do.

For a business app where I originally thought of using third-party software to synch up an events database with Google Calendar I had to roll my own and parse the ICal feed directly.

Answer 3

I use BusySync - largely because I needed this functionality before there was any other way to do it.

It works really well for me. The three or four calendars I subscribe to from Google calendars are Read-Write, and the fields match up pretty well.

I have looked at other options, but never pursued them, as the current method for me works fine.

Answer 4

At my work place we used the CalDAV protocol to sync 2 calendars between 4 computers and 2 people. Since only one person would ever change information we never had to worry about conflicts and it worked great.

We had two accounts but I can't comment on being able to create new calendars in iCal and have them appear in Google Calendar.

Answer 5

I can recommend the free service of Nuevasync http://nuevasync.com from experience. It takes your Google Calendar(s) and syncs them to iPhone or others using a Microsoft Exchange protocol.

2 way syncing, multiple calendars, works like a charm, I've been using it non-stop for 10 months now I think.

When you set up syncing make sure to check the Default calendar in your iPhone Calendar settings to prevent any mishaps, you have to set this to your primary Google Calendar manually.

Answer 6

There's also Calaboration. Very easy to use.

Answer 7

I have used two methods:

1) Add Google calendars to iCal using:

Navigate to iCal > Preferences > Accounts.

Click the plus button.

Select Google from the account type

Enter your username and password

This method worked great until a few weeks ago when I entered some kind of change which screwed up the sync. iCal started throwing weird errors and then changes that I entered on my Mac would no longer be pushed to Google Calendar.

So that lead me to:

2) Synchronize calendars using Spanning Sync:

Backup your iCal events!

Download and install [Spanning Sync][1] (free 15 day trial)