In this month’s issue of Wired Magazine they give a tip on how to use Dropbox to sync your iCal across multiple macs. Sure you can do this with MobileMe and pay $99 a year which gets you other features but Dropbox is Free (up to 2GB of Storage). Here is how to do it.
NOTE: Make sure you backup your Calendar Files and everything before you do this.
- If you don’t have Dropbox already you need to Download, Install and Setup an account. You can sign up Here.
- Once you have dropbox setup on your Main Machine Open Terminal which is located in your Applications/Utilities Folder.
- First you want to move your iCal File into the Dropbox Folder. Do this by entering or copying the following text and then hit Enter:
mv ~/Library/Calendars ~/Dropbox/
- Next you need to tell iCal to look in the dropbox folder when it opens. Do this by putting in this text and hit Enter:
ln -s ~/Dropbox/Calendars/ ~/Library/Calendars
You have now setup your Main Machine. Next thing to do is setup your 2nd computer. Since you already have moved your iCal folder to Drop box you can skip the first step… So on the 2nd Mac:
- You need to Delete the Calendar Folder from your 2nd Mac. It is located in your User Library (User/Library/Calendars)
- Then Open Terminal and Enter or Copy the following text and hit Enter:
ln -s ~/Dropbox/Calendars/ ~/Library/Calendars
This tells your 2nd Mac to look for the iCal File that should already be in your Dropbox Folder.
Now your two macs will sync with the same calendar File. Just make sure you are not changing both of them at the same time.
You can sync other Databases as well like Address Book. www.tipsfor.us shows a similar tutorial for the Address Book.app.
Dropbox has even setup an Automator workflow to help create these types of links (called Symlinks or Symbolic Links). Check out the Dropbox Tutorial (pdf). The Automator Action & Workflow can be downloaded here.
I also like Dropbox. Recently I found out how to get 2.25GB for free instead of just 2GB. When you sign-up use a ref link such as this one https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE4MjI4ODE5
Not having much luck with this. Is OS and version of iCal a factor?
No it should work with the latest version of Mac OS and iCal.
I have been asked how to undo the Dropbox Sync once you create it so here you go:
First of all make sure that iCal is shut down, then open your terminal.app and use this command:
rm ~/library/Calendarshit return, then use this command:
mv ~/Dropbox/Calendars ~/library/If you have used a different folder (other than “/Dropbox/Calendars”) for your dropbox sync then you must change the name in the commands.
Do that on all your machines and you will be back to using iCal as normal.
It does work fine, just not with different versions of Mac OS and iCal. I couldn’t get my old G4 laptop running tiger to play. Works fine between my iMac and Mac Pro.
Yeah, this doesn’t seem to work for me. I’m running tiger and there is no ‘calendars’ folder in my user directory.
I haven’t tried it in Tiger but it shouldn’t be in your User Directory. It should be in the Library folder of your user directory.
Once i have this working, can i take the Todo list app from my iphone and sync it to the drop box?
I don’t know how the todo list sync with the iphone. This is more fro syncing computer to computer.