So you like Google Calendar and use iCal every once in a while and you also have an iPhone. If you are like me you wish there was a way to sync Google Calendar and iCal so that you could sync Google Cal with your iPhone and you also wish you could do this wirelessly. Well, little did I know that Google Cal and iCal can sync together for pretty much free. The catch, you need to have Snow Leopard. In my opinion, this feature is worth the $29 you are going to pay for Snow Leopard. See, before Snow Leopard you had to buy Mac programs that would sync Google Cal for you.  I don’t know how this feature slipped past me when I first bought Snow Leopard when it first came out. In fact I honestly haven’t heard anything about it, until the other day.

For those of you who don’t use Google Calendar, you should really check it out. The reason why I love it is because it is a web interface, which means I can access my calendar on any computer or mobile device, as long as I have an internet connection. Also, sharing calendars with my wife is a breeze and it is so needed since our schedules are always all over the place. For those of you that sync your calendars by plugging in your iPhone into your computer to sync with iCal, you are going to love this. Ok, time to move onto the main event. If you are a visual learner, feel free to skip down to the bottom to see a video of how to do this. If you are okay with reading directions, continue on.

Set up a Google Calendar account.

If you don’t already have a Google account, make sure you go and sign up for one.

Set up iCal to sync with Google Calendar.

Open up iCal and click on the “Preferences” tab, under “File”. Then click on the “Accounts” tab and then you are going to want to add a new account.

Click on “Account Type” and select “Google”. You will then fill in your username and password. Once this is done your main calendar is going to show up in iCal. Now if you only have one calendar, then you are done with this part. If you have multiple calendars like I do, then you are going to want to move onto step 3.

Set up your other calendars

Click on the “Delegation” Tab and then a list of all your calendars should show up. Then you can click on the calendars that you want to view and sync with iCal.

At this point you should be done with this process. You can now test out whether it worked or not by adding a test event in iCal and see if it shows up in Google Calendar. If you are going to do this, make sure you refresh your browser so that the new event will show up.

Now if you are interested in getting your iPhone to sync wirelessly to your calendars you can use something called Nueva Sync. It is a free syncing service that syncs your Google Calendar with your iPhone Calendar. Why do this? Well, now you can truly sync wirelessly between Google Cal, iCal, and your iPhone at this point and there would be no need for wires to sync your calendars across your devices.

The only catch with Nueva Sync is that uses Active Exchange, which means that if you already have an Exchange account on your iPhone you cannot use Nueva Sync if you are not running the new iOS 4.0.  To set up Nueva Sync, just follow the directions on the site, you need to set up an account first and then from their set up your Google Cal info and it is pretty straight forward.

So why sync Google Calendar to iCal when you can get Google Calendar on any computer or mobile device? Well, for a couple of reasons. One, if you are ever without an internet connection, you at least still have iCal or your iPhone to input and check your calendars. You have the comfort of knowing that if you put in or change events in either that it will sync with Google Calendar once you do have an internet connection. Secondly, it is always good to have a back up of your calendar. I could not imagine if for some reason I lost all my calendar data on iCal or Google Calendar. At least this way, you have a backup if need be.

The process above explains the most recent way to sync Google Calendar with iCal. An update from our article a few years ago.