Synchronize Google Calendar & Contacts with iOS 6

I still use a 4th generation iPod Touch. Although I’m stuck with iOS 6, it still works fine for doing the things I use it for: e-mail, contacts, calendar, alarm clock, reading RSS-feeds (Reeder, reading from Feedly), Twitter (using Tweetbot), and Pocket.

For e-mail, I use the GMail application. For contacts and calendar, I use Apple’s native Contacts and Calendars apps, synchronized with my Google account via the Exchange protocol. Until recently, this worked fine. I had offline access to my contacts and calendar events, and it synchronized when I was online.

About a month ago, synchronization stopped working. I don’t get any error message, it just doesn’t synchronize anymore. Today, I solved the problem by removing the Exchange account, and performing the following steps.

Synchronized calendars: add a Google account

1. Go to “Settings › Mail, Contacts, Calendar › Add Account › GMail”
2. Enter the following information:

   Name	your full name
   Email	your e-mail address
   Password	your Google account password
   Description	a description of the account

3. Select which services you want to synchronize: E-mail, Calendars, Notes (I only synchronize calendars)

Synchronized contacts: add a CardDAV account

1. Go to “Settings › Mail, Contacts, Calendar › Add Account › Other › Add CardDAV Account”
2. Enter the following information:

   Server	google.com
   User Name	your e-mail address
   Password	your Google account password
   Description	a description of the account