Shriya and I use Gmail and Google Calendar extensively. iPhone’s native Calendar is nice but Google Calendar lets us access our events from our computers as well. Plus, I have tons of contacts already filled out in my Gmail that would be nice to have them in my iPhone.
With Google Calendar, you can also subscribe to other Calendar (CalDAV) compatible services like Remember the Milk, Anyvite, etc.
Enable IMAP in Gmail
First step to setting up Gmail as an Exchange account is to enable IMAP in your Gmail account. Launch your Gmail account in a web browser, go to Mail Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> Enable IMAP –> Save Changes.
How to Sync Google Calendar with iPhone?
With this little tip, you can integrate Google Calendar right into your iPhone Calendar using Google Sync. I am going to assume you have upgraded to OS 3.0 and get to 2.2 later.
iPhone OS Version 4.x
- Open Settings in iPhone
- Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars
- Tap on Add Account
- Select Microsoft Exchange
- In the Email field, enter your full Gmail address
- You can leave the Domain field empty
- In Username, enter your full email address
- In Password, enter your Google password
- Hit Next and enter m.google.com in Server field
- Press Next
- Select the Google Services you want to Sync – only Calendar & Contacts supported at the moment
- Choose ‘Keep on my iPhone‘ to keep your existing contacts and events in your iPhone.
- And you are done!
Gotchas
- Google Calendar and Contacts will automatically sync if you have Push (Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data) enabled. Push settings can also drain your battery faster so play with it and see how your battery holds up with various intervals.
- You can choose which of your Google Calendars to Sync by going to http://m.google.com/sync in Safari
- You can only create 1 Exchange ActiveSync account. So if you already use one for work you are out of luck. Thanks Apple!
- After the Sync is done, you chose to see All Calendars or just specific Calendars in iPhone
Hope you were able to set up your Google Calendar and Contacts in your iPhone with these instructions. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them.
