Sync your Mac Address Book with Google Contacts

You can easily sync your Mac Contact list or Address Book contacts with your Google Contacts. This is quite easy to set up, we’ll show you how to do so in all versions of OS X.

First we’ll cover new versions of OS X with the Contacts app, new versions of OS X automate this process quite well making it remarkably simple.

How to Sync Mac Contacts App with Google Contacts in OS X

1. Open the Contacts app in OS X and go to the “File” menu followed by “Preferences”
2. Choose the ‘Accounts’ tab and click on the + plus button
3. Choose ‘Google’ and enter your Google account login information, complete the setup process and choose to sync the contact information with Google

This is the same for all modern versions of OS X, including Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, anything where the contacts app is labeled as “Contacts”. The Google-to-Mac sync ability is available in earlier versions of OS X however too, it’s just slightly different to setup and a bit less automated.

Syncing Mac Address Book with Google Contacts in OS X Snow Leopard

* Launch Address Book
* Click on the “Address Book” menu and select “Preferences”
* Click on the “Accounts” tab
* Select the “On My Mac” under the left accounts
* Check the checkbox accompanying “Synchronize with Google”
* Click on “Configure…”
* Enter your Google Account login, click “OK”
* Then click “Sync Now” from the menubar
* Now your Address Book is synchronized with your Google contacts!

This latter walkthrough is set within Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard but the ability to sync Google contacts with Address Book is within 10.5 as well (users have mixed results, I don’t have Leopard 10.5 so I am unable to help much). Syncing makes everyones life easier. Your Gmail contacts will now be the same as what is on your iPhone, Mail.app, and anything else that uses the Mac Address Book!

Update: If you’re having troubles with older versions of OS X, one of our helpful readers, Steve Guttbinder, suggests the following:

This process uses iSync to synchronize. You need to manually hit sync from the menu bar OR use iSync. The menu bar icon is the SAME as the MobileMe sync icon (since that uses iSync as well). If you do not manually hit sync, it will NOT DO ANYTHING, you merely just set it up.

Thanks for the tip Steve!

Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or comments regarding syncing your contacts between Google and Mac OS X!