Thursday, March 25, 2010

Sync Google Contacts to OSX Address Book Without An iPhone

Lifehacker had a quick note pointing out when Apple added their 'sync to Google Contacts' option to OSX 10.5 and 10.6. You had to have an iPhone or iPod touch to use it though.

Shortly after that someone pointed out to them how to hack the ipod plist file to make it think you have one, thus turning the option on.

They didn't point out that if you have had multiple iPods attached to your machine, you'll have multiple entries to choose from when altering the 'Family ID' tag.

I had an entry for my iPod mini, which has long since died and gone to the recyclers. I figured that was the perfect one to change. So I altered the plist with vim, started Address Book and there's the option just like promised. I enabled it, and nothing happened.....

It turns out that syncing to Google in 10.5 is done only when your iPod syncs. (10.6 will do it hourly as well) Then I had a thought. I pulled out my Motorola cell phone which I enabled syncing on previously, and launched iSync.
Tada! When it synced the phone, it synced with Google too.

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