How to Sync Google Calendar With iPhone Calendar

By , Jun 30, 2009

My fiance Tina is a mental therapist and she regularly has appointments with clients. She usually uses her old Samsung phone as a calendar but needless to say it is not very practical. I recently “forced” her to get an iPod Touch and one of my sales argument was that she could use it as a calendar and that she would be able to sync it with Google calendar over the air. Note that these were just arguments I pulled out of my butt so she agrees to get an iTouch (yes, the iTouch is more for me than for her)…

We finally bought a 32GB iPod Touch and I started looking into ways to sync an iPhone calendar with Google calendar. I found many options but all involved some third party apps and that’s clearly not what I was looking for. I was very surprised that Apple hadn’t included this feature in the iPhone/iPod Touch until I actually found an article on JAIB saying that the new OS 3.0 supports CalDAV with SSL so your are technically able to sync Google calendar with your iPhone or iPod Touch, as long as you have internet access.

Here is how to set up your iPhone or iPod Touch to sync calendars with Google over the air:

1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account > Other > Add CalDAV Account

2. For the CalDAV settings, enter the following information. Note that your username should be the email address you use to access your Google calendar as well as the password.

3. Then tap “Next” and it should verify your information.

4. If you can’t get your account verified, tap “Advanced settings” and make sure that “Use SSL” is On, that the port is 443, and that your Account URL includes the sign “@” in your email address.

That’s it!

Now every time you add an event to your iPhone calendar, it will also show up on your Google calendar, and vice versa. You obviously need to have internet access from your iPod or iPhone for the data to sync. Note that the sync is not immediate. It sometimes takes a few seconds but besides this, it works very well.

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  • LaDawn Millward

    I’m having the same problem. I’ve tried syncing through exchange, gmail and calDAV and nothing will send my events on my phone to my gmail calendar. It all seems to be verified. My husband did it with an older iphone but can’t remember how he did it. HELP!!! This is very important for our marriage to have our calendars synced with gmail

  • LaDawn Millward

    It always says my password is incorrect. I’ve entered it many times to make sure it is correct. It’s really not a hard one. It does this with exchange and calDAV. What am I doing wrong

  • Carles

    It worked great for me… Maybe you need last version of IOS….

  • Frank

    Is there a way to link multiple Google calendars that use the same Google account?

  • Doug

    Much easier way!!! AND YOU CAN ADD EVENTS TO ALL YOUR DIFFERENT GOOGLE CALENDARS!!!

    1) On iPhone: Settings -> Mail, contacts -> add account-> microsoft exchange:
    2) Email = full google email address; domain = leave blank; user = full google email; pass = google pass; description = whatever you want your google account to show up as on your phone (IE “google” or “Primary”)
    3) Once it verifies, there will be a “server” section; put in m.google.com
    4) Once it verifies again, you have to option to sync mail, calendar, contacts. I suggest you dont do contacts, but if you want to, BACK UP CONTACTS FIRST, you can mess with this option later.

    Once all that is done, in safari in your iphone, open m.google.com/sync
    check the calenders to sync and click save.

    Thats it! Open your calendar on your iphone and all your google calendars should be there AND you should be able to choose which calender to add events too!!! It took me a long time to figure this out, but I LOVE that it works now!!! Finally!!

    • Ira

      Hi Doug,

      In safari, after I opened “m.google.com/sync” I received a massage saying that Google Sync is not supported for my device. I have iPhone 4 with the latest 4.2 os, can you further assist?
      thanks,
      Ira.

      • ADaw

        You got a massage?

  • http://www.facebook.com/gpenapujols Guillermo

    Hi there. I had that problem too.

    First I add my gmail account as a MS Exchange. I sync my contacts and my principals calendars. But didn’t sync my “Other Calendars” (calendars I share with others).

    To sync with “others calendars” I go to http://m.google.com/sync (remember to log in first) and like Ira, I got the same message: “Google sync is not supported for my device”. So, I click on “change language”, and select “English”. Then, I can select wich “other calendars” I want to sync with my iphone.

    P.S.: Sorry for my English, I got several years without practice.

    • Ira

      Thaks!
      After posting that msg I read that i can sync calander usig ״calDAV” and it worked!
      Thouh it isnt “push”…

      I will however try what you said…
      Thanks!
      Ira

  • Tina

    Thank you, thank you! This is wonderful! I have been seeking a way to do this. After doing the originally posted steps, and opening my Calendar app, I just had to click on Calendars at the top right to also display the Google calendar to my list.
    :D !

  • Melissa

    Sorry I am not technology savy…I know what Push means…but since the calendar dosent “push” how do I get them to sync once I have it set up?

    • Melisa

      Nevermind…I got it to work. Guess I am more tech savy then I thought. This worked awesome by the way…Thanks.

  • Alyssa

    Thanks for the tip. I followed your instructions and managed to set up the account. I have seen one test event that I typed into the google calendar show up on my iphone. Currently, my google calendar is empty minus that one test event (I have just started using it). I don’t know how to get all of my appointments from my phone to show up in google. It only seems to be syncing from google to the iphone not the other way around.

  • ronit

    this works for me if i want to send my google calendar to my iphone, but i also want my iphone appointments to be sent to my google calendar…help? am i an idiot?

  • ronit

    hmmm nevermind…got it, or well enough. i just made my default calendar on my iphone my google calendar…can’t sync the old events on my iphone calendar but at least in the future it will be just one calendar…good enough

  • ronit

    ahhhh even better, i can just change on my iphone which calendar i want each event on…so i’m just changing them all…and i’m writing a million comments here…

  • Jason Otto

    What I missed is that you need to go back to calendars, top left button in iPhone app. Select both the iPhone and google calendars and both will update.

  • Cindy

    Amazing…followed these instructions and it worked like a charm! Thank You.

  • Rock

    Awesome… tring to figure out a way to sync lotus notes to my iphone as close to real time for quite some time, and this worked like a charm. calsync to sync notes to google, (background – realtime) CALDAV to sync google to iphone ( near realtime) I am in sync :-)

  • Ryan

    I can get it to sync with my phone (as in when I update Google Calender it syncs to the phone) but when I add an event on my phone it won’t sync with Google Calender on the site.

    • http://www.modernmagic.com modernmagic

      what calendar are you adding the event to on your iphone?

  • Michelle

    awesome…………..this worked great! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  • Amanda

    I am able to get all the way to synching my iPhone and google calendars, but it seems to still be my old iPhone with it’s last sync at the end of December last year. How can I connect it to my new phone?

  • lolly

    i’m at my wit’s end. Have tried the above instructions and the instructions on google for syncing my google calender with my iphone. I get no error messages, everything validates fine but my calender is blank….and i actually am somewhat tech saavy. help?

  • http://www.google.com aeris

    Hi arent the events I already had on my iphone calendar supposed to pass to my gmail calendar??? Or it doesnt work that way also? Is there a setting I have to change or something? THANKS A MILLION!!!!!!!

  • Ladd

    Thanks so much! I have seen other people trying to explain how to sync but it was too confusing. This is the simplest ever! Works perfectly!

  • Hannah

    This was awesome!! Thank you. So helpful.

  • Jeff

    I’ve done this with a procedure that uses m.google.com as an exchange server. You can use it for mail and calendar or just calendar. I also use google calendar sync to sync my google calendar with outlook, so i get a 3-way sync between my outlook, google calendar, and iphone. this is probably the best way i’ve found to do it, as i can enter appointments on any of the 3 and they get synced over to the other two.

  • FB

    I works great. Thanks

  • Scott

    Nope. Tried this on an iTouch with both CALdav and Microsoft exchange settings using iOS 4.2. Neither one updates the calendar. It is just blank.

    • Scott

      Edit

      Thanks to Carrie above and the link to iphone sync settings at google it now works.

  • Mary

    Awesome. I’m so happy I got this to work!

  • Leo

    Followed All steps. Not working

  • Ally

    If you are having issues syncing from your iPhone to the computer’s Google calendar, read this.

    Make sure that, as you add an event to the calendar on your iPhone, it is adding to the correct calendar. The automatic calendar is your iPhone calendar, NOT the Google Calendar.

    When you are looking at your calendar, tap the blue Calendars button and uncheck the line that is next to your phone’s calendar. Your Google calendar’s line should stay checked.

    Any new events will be added as a Google calendar event, which should sync to your Google calendar on the computer.

  • Britt

    Thank you very much!

  • Chantal

    I just tried this as I wanted to sync my iPhone calendar to Google Calendars so that I could share it with others.

    My iPhone calendar has now been wiped. Really not what I had in mind.

  • Evelina

    I use Plan, it’s syncs easy with google calendar, and show as tasks. simple and quick. Genius

    http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/plan/id428005487?mt=8&ls=1#

  • Michelle

    Thanks for this! Exactly what I needed!

  • liz

    Thank you!!! This has been really helpful.

  • Holly

    Thanks!! Really helpful!!! -I have read all of the above… just need to clarify (sorry)… I now need to type in events on my iphone using the google calendar to get it to show on my computer. If I type in on the iphone calendar it won’t show up on my computer. (Correct? That is what is happening now….). If that IS the case, no worries going forward… I will just need to re-enter all recurring events on this new calendar now? I’m not seeing a way to sync the 2 on my iphone. Thanks in advance!

  • Karyn

    Now I have double appoitments :( What do I do?

    • Karyn

      Never mind, it fixed itself :)

  • Mazie

    Now I have three of everything on my iphone

    • Karyn

      When you’re in your Calendar click on Calendars on the upper left corner. Make sure the only calendar selected is your gmail calendar – it will have a check by it. :) Let me know if that works.

  • Persia

    Thank you!! I’ve read many different forums and none offered such a straightforward answer!! MANY THANKS!!

  • zqbh86

    Hi, my iphone calendar already sync with gmail calendar,but the time always got 1day difference. For example, in my gmail calendar, I set an event on 16/06 at 8am -9am, which shows in my iphone calender as 3pm-4pm on15/06. I have checked the time zone setting for both, they are same. Could you pls help what’s going on? Thank you!

    • Rock

      Which country were u in when u set up gmail and which country r u in now when u set up the iPhone. This is def a zone issue but need to figure which needs to be corrected.
      Michelle. Always welcome! ;)

  • Mazie

    Thanks Karyn! Got it working now :)

  • zqbh86

    Thank you Rock, its ok now! Yeah!

  • Paul Wilke

    Excellent description. I successfully linked my iphone calendar to my google calendar. Thanks for the help.

  • nst

    Thank you for this post. Was very helpful! :)

  • mfarounb

    Great resource to have the Google-iPhone calendar sync! However, I get a time difference of 4 hours from my Google calendar to my iPhone. For example: my Google 10AM appointments appear as 6AM appointments on the iPhone. How do I fix this?

  • Jessica

    You rock! This totally worked for me on the first try. Thank you!

  • Lee-Ann

    HI,
    Thank you so much. This worked perfectly for me. Is there a way to transfer existing appointments from the iphone calendar to my google calendar. All my new events transfer automatically but is there a way to transfer the existing data over?

  • terry

    Thanks so much now I can access both my personal and work calendar from my phone and so easy.
    I love my iphone more every day.

  • Sarah

    I can’t figure out why this is not working. I am following all the steps, but it is saying “Unable to verify” I am wondering if it is because I use my comcast email for the google calendar instead of a gmail account (which I do not have). Any suggestions? Thanks!

  • James

    Worked like a dream for me, huge thanks, very simple and easy to use, cheers now

  • http://na BR

    Wow, I never had anything work so quickly. I’ve been buying apps and trying to get them to sync up with google calendars and it ended up erasing all my important work history data. Thanks for this article!

  • MGL

    Thanks for the easy-to-follow instructions. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for a while. This worked very well.

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