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Google Calendars in iCal

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This blog post is over 17 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

27 Jul 2006

Tara Hunt recently complained on her blog that with Google Calendar if she’s not online she can’t see her calendar. If you have a Mac with iCal or any other calendar software that can subscribe to an iCalendar, you can have offline access.

First, log into Google Calendar and pull up your calendar. Click the little down arrow next to your calendar’s name on the left. Choose "Calendar settings."

Access Calendar settings

Scroll down to "Private Address" and copy the ICAL url to your clipboard. (Right click or CTRL-Click the ICAL image and "Save Link As")

Get the iCal URL

In iCal, choose Calendar / Subscribe from the menu (or hit Cmd-Opt-S) and paste in the URL you just copied and hit Subscribe.

Paste subscription URL

Change the settings to...

Refresh every 15 minutes
Don’t remove alarms
Don’t remove To Do items

iCal Subscription options

Your calendar is now synced to iCal. You can’t change any events or add new ones, but you can see them when you’re offline and sync them to other devices using iSync.

iCal Screenshot

Tara 'Miss Rogue' Hunt
July 27, 2006 5:17 PM

This is awesome. You don't know how excited this makes me. :) Thanks!

carlos
August 13, 2006 1:39 PM

I guess I am out of complains about google.... rock the web!

roland
August 14, 2006 9:55 AM

I do still have one compalint : now i want to sync in the other way ... modify my calendar (online or offline) and send it back to the master that is hosted at google ... any idea ?

Adam Kalsey
August 14, 2006 11:40 AM

Two way sync? Not possible without building an app that takes advantage of the Google API. Now you can manage your calendar in iCal and mirror it in Google Calendar, but then the Google copy is read-only. The process is a LOT more complicated, however, and you need to have access to a server that supports WebDAV in order to do it.

Suresh
December 11, 2007 3:56 AM

gSync allows synchronization between iCal and gCal.

Sean Malone
December 13, 2009 3:51 PM

Dang, Adam, I just did a google on "iCal URL FTP sync" and this old blog post ranked #1... small world. Guess I have to go private FTP route. Hope all is well.

This discussion has been closed.

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