Synchronize your iPhone with Google Calendar

Finally!This how-to isn’t in the usual remit of this blog, but it solves a problem I’ve had for a while – I can’t use the iPhone’s built-in calendar functionality with Google Calendar – so I thought I’d share.

The iPhone 3.0 software update supports CalDAV, an open standard for sharing and updating calendar information. Luckily, so does Google Calendar.

It should really be easier than this; one of the important aspects of integration through open standards isn’t just its possibility, but also its accessibility. This feels more like a hack than real functionality – but at least it works.

  1. On your iPhone, press Settings, and then Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  2. Press Add Account… and then Other.
  3. Press Add CalDAV account.
  4. Follow the instructions for enabling Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal. Specifically, this means using your Google account details for the username and password, and setting the CalDAV server name to be https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.COM/user.
  5. I found that the iPhone didn’t pick up the authentication first time round – you may need to go into Advanced settings and re-enter them. The www in the server name seems to be important.

You can also do it using Google Calendar’s Exchange emulation, but that never worked for me. As with this, your mileage may vary.


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Comments

5 responses to “Synchronize your iPhone with Google Calendar”

  1. Marcus Povey Avatar

    Got mine working yesterday after much tatting… now also syncs with upcoming and dopplr which is useful.. shame it can only handle the main calendar and not sub cals, but that’s not the end of the world…

  2. Andrew Ducker Avatar

    I tend to use GooSync for this kind of thing. It syncs Google Calendar to my Nokia and also the syncs the contacts.

    Which means that whenever I’ve changed phones (or lost them, or had them die on me) I’ve been able to get my contacts and appointments back within minutes of the new one arriving.

    Cloud backups are _great_.

  3. lisa Avatar

    I can not open any attachments my staff sends me from their calendar which is microsoft outlook. I need to be able to not only open them to see them on my iphone but to also then to send to my iphones calendar. someone told me iphone doesn’t support microsoft outlook calendar. Any suggestions? Someonelse told me to look into the google calendar.

  4. Mark Farrow Avatar
    Mark Farrow

    Worked first time thank you very much. Looks like one of my shared Calendars is not coming thru but I will figure it out 2 out of the three google calendars I share are there.

  5. Bill Avatar

    This was exactly what I was looking for! Just got my iPhone on Friday and was annoyed I couldn’t set up my Google Calendar, but this did the trick in no time! Thanks again!

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