iPhone Google contacts sync
If you would like to sync your Google contacts with your iPhone, then you are at the right place. There are lots of local and over-the-air sync options to sync your google contacts with your iPhone. There are lots of third party applications that makes it happen too.
Official iTunes way
iTunes version 7.7 or later supports a feature which allows to sync Google contacts with your iPhone. All you got to do is just provide your Google login credentials to iTunes and iTunes will do the rest for you. Let me go with the traditional step-by-step How to Instructions to sync your google contacts with the iPhone.
Sync Steps
- Connect your iPhone to the PC and iTunes should automatically fire up
- Choose your iPhone from the iTunes device list
- Browse to the contacts section of the Info tab in iTunes
- Choose Google Contacts in the configuration option. This step slightly varies in iTunes(WIndows) and iTunes (Mac)
- Configure your Gmail/Google Username and Password and click OK/Apply
- Click Sync and you are done. Your Google contacts will sync with your iPhone next time.
Windows
Mac
Pitfalls
- Google contacts uses the e-mail address as an unique identifier and multiple contacts with the same e-mail will create problems during sync.
- Gmail automatically adds all the contacts with whom you have corresponded to the Google contact list. So you have to consider cleaning up your Google contacts before doing a sync.
- You cannot configure which set of google contacts you need to sync with your iPhone. iTunes blindly syncs all your contacts from the google account. Even the ‘most contacted‘ group is synced.
Mac OS Address Book Way
You can also sync your google contacts with your iPhone via Mac Address book application. All iPhones sync with the Mac Address book by default. So if the Mac Address book application is able to sync with the google contacts, it can automatically move the google contacts to your iPhone.
Mac OS X 10.5.3 and above supports this feature.
Config Steps
- Go to Address book menu
- Choose Preferences
- check Synchronize with Google
- Input your Google account and password and you are done.
Other Ways to Sync
There are also other ways to sync your google contacts with your iPhone over-the-air.
- Plaxo is an over-the-air sync solution that helps you have your contacts in sync across Outlook, Google, Yahoo, Thunderbird, AIM, and Mac’s Address Book
- Funambol is an over-the-air sync service that allows you to have your contacts in sync across various platforms.
For techies
People may be interested to know that the sync software communicates with Gmail’s contact info using the Google Data APIs. You can read more about how this works in Google Data APIs and Objective-C.
