Syncing Apple's Addressbook with Google


Apparently Apple’s decided to most irritatingly hide the “Sync with Google”
option in their Addressbook, unless you buy an iPhone. I currently lack
either an iPhone or an iPod Touch, so I’m apparently out of luck.


Thankfully, someone else has already figured this out. Unfortunately, his
blog seems to be down - but it’s still in Google’s cache. Here’s his findings:

Courtesy Eli’s Blog:

Sync Google Contacts with Apple’s Address Book WITHOUT an iPhone/iPod Touch, and without MobileMe


Step 1. Get the “Synchronize with Google” option to show up in Address Book. You will need 10.5.3 or later, and just the right entry In the com.apple.ipod.plist file stored in ~/Library/Preferences. If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch , you wont need to do this step. From the terminal, run the following:

defaults write com.apple.iPod Devices -dict-add red-herring '{ "Family ID" = 10001; }'


Step 2. Run Address Book. Go to Preferences, and enable “Syncronize with Google”. Accept the warning/agreenment and put in your credentials.


Step 3. We change the GoogleContactSync from being an ‘app’ which requires iTunes to trigger the sync, to a ‘server’ which can just be triggered on its own. Again, from the terminal:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Resources/ClientDescription Type 'server'

sudo chmod 644 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Resources/ClientDescription.plist


Step 4. Run iSync. Go to Preferences, and enable “Show Status in Menu Bar”.


Step 5. Very important. Reboot.


…and that should do it. Choose “Sync Now” from the iSync menu bar item whenever you want to sync them.


This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.