Mac How To: Syncing Google Calendar and iCal

by Shaun


One of the things that I have always loved doing is helping people with how to use their technology. I am not saying that I know everything. But I do know a decent amount. I love to use my passion for technology to help others to become better users of their tech. If I don’t know the answer, I love the challenge to find out how.

One of the things I get a decent amount of people asking me is “How can I get my Google Cal to sync with my new Mac that I just bought?” I thought this would be a great tutorial to do for my first post of this section. I love using Google Cal, especially since I share calendars with my wife and we have busy schedules. And so why would I want to sync my Google Cal and my iCal together? There are a couple of reasons to do this. One, just for the mere fact that I want to have the two in sync. The second reason, is because I want to have my Google Cal and iPhone Cal synced together. If my iCal and Google Cal are in sync, I can then sync my iPhone with my Mac and now I will have the updated calendars from Google Cal. To give you a peek into next week’s tutorial, I will talk about how to sync Google Cal and your calendar on your iPhone without having to sync to your Mac. Until then, enjoy the following tutorial.

The first thing you are going to want to do is open iCal and open up the Preferences.


Next, you are going to click on the “Accounts” tab. Then click on the “+” on the bottom left to add a new account.


Here you will be adding your Google account. Click on “Account Type” and select “Google”. Then you will enter your email address and password for your Google Account.


Once you do this, you are almost done. If you only have one calendar on Google Cal, then you are done, and your Google Cal should now be showing up on iCal. If you have more than one Google Cal, then you are almost done. For example, my wife and I share a few calendars so in order for them to all show up you must do the next step.

When you are still in the “Accounts” tab, you are going to want to click on the “Delegation” tab. When you do this, wait a bit and you will see all of the calendars that you have on your Google Cal. You are then going to click on the calendars that you are going to want to sync to iCal.


When you are done doing this, your calendars should now be syncing with iCal. Now keep in mind, if you have a lot of calendars, this may take a bit, so be patient. Once they are done syncing you can now edit and add calendar items in either Google Cal or iCal and they both should stay in sync with each other.

I hope this tutorial helps you out. Please let me know if you have any questions. Also, if you have any more ideas for tutorials, please leave me a comment. Thanks for reading!

UPDATED

I have had a lot of comments of people not being able to sync from iCal back to Google Calendar. I am not sure where people are actually getting hung up. So I am taking a chance here on trying to solve people’s problems. I am assuming that most people are setting iCal up the way that I stated in the post. I think where people are getting hung up is how they enter in their events in iCal. You have to make sure that the event is not an iCal event, but a Google Cal event. If you look at my picture below, when I made a test event, I either have to choose “Home” from my Gmail account or one of the other calendars from the “Delegates” list. Only then will my calendars from iCal sync over the Google Cal. If I were to choose one of the calendars from “On My Mac”, then it will not sync. Hope this helps you for those that are having trouble syncing from iCal to Google Cal. If not, let me know.