Use your Google calendars on your iPhone

If you use Google's calendar you can synch it with your iPhone's built in calendar (which I must say, is a really nice app). You don't have to use Apple's Cloud, or be restricted to iCal on your Mac.

Google has now provided instructions (spoken, even!) for synching your mobile device calendar with Google's, including iPhone. Better late than never.

Here's how:

1: Set up a Google Calendar account on the iPhone

On your iPhone go to:

Settings> Mail, contacts, calendars > Add account > Other > Add CalDAV account

Then:

• Server is google.com, 
• User name is your Google user name (the email address or whatever that you sign in with), 
• Password is your Google account password,
• Description is optional. 

Then cllick Advanced settings and make sure SSL is On.

2: In Google, select the calendars you want on your iPhone

I noticed that not all my different calendars were showing. So:

• Open a mobile browser and go to this url: https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect
• Sign into Google with your user email and password. 
• On the list of your calendars, check those that you want on your iPhone.

Done! it works!

3: Set your preferred Google calendar to be the default

Entries added on my iPhone weren't getting through initially - because it had decided to use the inbuilt Birthdays as the default calendar.

• Go back to Settings > Mail, contacts, calendars > and scroll down to Calendars > Default calendar.
• You'll see a list of those available. Delete any that aren't on your Google calendar and select the one you want to be your default.

You can also delete all the extraneous additional 'calendars' (that the iPhone is born with, I suppose).

4: Select on your iPhone the calendars you want to see

• Return to the home screen and go to Calendar.
• In any view, go to Calendars (top left of the screen) and from the list select those you want it to show on your iPhone. Then you can click the Refresh button bottom left.

After about half a day searching Google for answers, my iPhone does now perfectly synch iPhone < > Google calendar < > desktop Mac, both ways throughout. Solved!

(On my MacBook / iMac I like to use Mozilla's Sunbird with the Provider add-on, but that's a different story.)

PS: Searches on Google didn't throw up the iPhone manual as a possible source of answers, but it is fairly helpful although not as detailed. I'm not sure it gives the complete answer.

Your Google calendar on your desktop - Sunbird

I much prefer Sunbird to iCal for synching with a Google calendar (or any other online calendar, I guess). For instance you can show not just the current month but the current 5 or 6 weeks in one view. - October 2013, I just had to check this following an upgrade to OS 10.8, Mountain Lion - it all works.

Sunbird is free, developed by Mozilla of Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client. (Similarly I prefer T-bird to Mail). They are trying to make people give up Sunbird, which is a stand alone calendar, and take to Lightening which works as part of Thunderbird. Like many others I want my calendar separate, thanks.

You can still get Sunbird and it works on Mac OS 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 (that's Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion). Sunbird v. 1.0b1 is here (for Windows, Linux and Mac).

Once you've downloaded and installed it, you need an extra bit of software - Provider. This enables you to link to your Google calendars. Download and save it from here - Provider 0.6b1 (scroll down until you see this version, others only work with Lightening).

Then, back to Sunbird. Top menu, Tools > Extensions > Install. Then navigate to where you saved Provider and select it, confirm Install if asked.

Okay, now you're set up to communicate with Google calendar, but where are your events etc? You have to add a link to each of your calendars, one at a time.

Open a browser and go to your Google Calendar. Highlight a calendar and click the little down arrow to the right. Select Settings.

Scroll down the Settings screen and you'll see Calendar address. Click iCal and highlight and copy the code you see.

Now back to Sunbird. File > Subscribe to remote calendar > Create a new calendar - On the Network >  Google calendar - and paste in the code you copied from Google. You'll be asked for your Google account name and password. Choose a name and a colour for the calendar and you're done.

Repeat for each of your Google calendars and any public ones you want to add.

One last thing, Sunbird > Preferenced > Advanced > Encryption, make sure Use SSL 3.0 is ticked and use TLS 1.0 is not ticked.

A bit of a faff, but worth it I find.

iPhone calendar - even better, Fantastical

While we're on calendars, I thought the iCal one was fine on the iPhone until I found Fantastical (£1.99 I think). It's an app that simply provides a new calendar interface. Just install Fantastical on your iPhone and it will ask you to give it permission to use your calendars (provided you have linked to them as in the previous posts). Then they, fantastically, appear.



Dates will display across the top of the screen - pull down the tab for a monthly view. Pull down again to return to the list. Scroll around very quickly and nicely - all sorts of other refinements. Nice.

iPhone calendar - show public holidays

The previous post dealt with synching iPhone's calendar with Google calendar, but following that process you don't get public holidays showing.

Here's how to do that.

First do Stage 1 on your iPhone:
Settings> Mail, contacts, calendars > Add account > Other > only this time, select Add subscribed calendar.

Then, the server is whatever public holiday calendar you wish. I used Apple's purely because it's easy to find the server address:
ical.mac.com/ical/UK32Holidays.ics

For US public holidays, it's
ical.mac.com/ical/US32Holidays.ics

Or if you're using Google calendars anyway, here's Google's:
https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/uk__en%40holiday.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Solved: Synch iPhone's calendar with Google calendar

Please see update blog, March 30th 2013