Have a lot of different calendars arranged in your Google Calendar, and curious how to manage which calendars display across the different devices you sync to? Perhaps you use an iPhone primarily for work and an iPad for play? If you're syncing both devices to the same Google account, then knowing how to tell Google which devices should see which calendars is a necessity. Follow us after the break to find out how to do just this.
The default calendar app for the iPhone lets you only show certain calendars, but this often doesn't extend to 3rd party App Store apps that pull calendar data from iOS. Fortunately, Google has provided an easy and straight-forward way of doing this if you're set up through Exchange ActiveSync.
- After you setup Google Sync on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you'll want to go into Safari and point it to m.google.com/sync in order to manage your devices.
From here you'll need to select your desired device. If you've ever synced other devices (including but not limited to previous iOS devices) you'll see them all displayed here with a time-stamp of your last sync.
Tap on the device you'd like to manage and you'll have the ability to select any calendar you want synced to your device. De-select any calendar you'd like your device not synced with.
4) Finally, tap 'Save' at the top and you'll be taken back to your device selection. Once you've saved the calendars you'd like to have synced, open up your calendar app and allow it a moment to sync up your new calendars. If you'd like to verify that only the specific calendars you selected have been synced, tap 'Calendars' at the top-left to see a list of all calendars.
That's it! Now you have full control over which calendars are synced to your iDevice from Google Calendar. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!
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Reader comments
Daily Tip: How to add/remove individual calendars from Google Sync
If you try to enter m.google.com/sync from a non english device you will get an error. But you can change the language directly from safari.
Best,
Sometimes I've had difficulty getting the calendar app to update right away after I first set up google sync on a new phone, so I go into the multi-task menu, go into "giggly" mode and kill the calendar app. When I relaunch it automatically resync all calendars and pick up the sync changes.
I wish Google would give me the ability to remove devices from this menu and/or name the devices. I have an original, 3GS and 4 all on this list but no way to tell which is which since they all say "iPhone."
Wow! ... Thanks for this, I failed to remember that you can set up google calendars as Exchange, I just had it set up under the stock gmail settings. I am loving it! ... Thanks!
I hate aol .com their all junky
Once again TiPb comes through...was looking for a way to do this, and knew it had to be possible! Now I can maintain some semblance of order on my Google calendar, and have those same "categories" synced to my iPhone!
OK - hopefully this will help someone avoid the hours of frustration I encountered. So I did every step listed in this thread, multiple times and dated/old/shared Gmail calendars were still showing up in my iPhone calendar.
Login to Gmail on a PC/browser
Go to Calendar
Select the drop down arrow next to "other calendars"
Select "settings"
Unsubscribe from offending calendars
Delete Gmail account/all data from iphone
Re-add Gmail account allow sync
Viola calendars gone.
Apparently "hiding" calendars on Gmail does nothing on the iPhone - you have to actually unsubscribe from the calendar, which will permanently remove any and all history/notifications/visibility for that calendar.
Hope this helps at least one person avoid the hours of wasted time struggling for an answer.
Also will add my voice to those calling on Apple to add a "delete" function. Calendars should be able to be side swiped and deleted like most other items in iPhone.
Regards,
Drew
Thank you, Drew MacFadyen!!! We could not figure out how to get rid of our kids' Google calendars off my iPhone now that they have iCal. (Their hand-me-down iPods were so old, iCal didn't work. Now, they have hand-me-down iPhones that aren't activated as phones, so they're basically fat iPods.) Will have to show my husband your post. I haven't tried removing my own Google calendar (which I don't use) from my phone b/c it didn't have an "unsubscribe" button next to it, & I haven't figured out how to remove my Gmail acct from my iPhone. (I can click a button so it doesn't show up at the top of my email accts list, but it still shows up in the bottom list.)