Google Calendars in iCal

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.”

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”)

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

Change the settings to…

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

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.