Using Google Gmail / Apps contacts with OSX Mountain Lion Contacts via the CardDAV Protocol

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been messing around with your Google Gmail / Apps contacts configuration in an attempt to get your iMessage and Mail (and others) apps to use them.

Like you, I thought simply clicking the “Synchronize with Google” under On My Mac would bring them over. You check the box, type in the applicable user & password and the Contacts app grinds for a bit, but alas none of your contacts appear. What I’d call a pisser.

I happen to operate pretty much totally from Google Apps for my messaging and office productivity. Because I have so many different devices, I prefer Google as the common denominator for contact management. As fun as maintaining duplicates of my contacts in iCloud would be, I played around and found a solid fix.

• Click the Apple icon on the top left of your screen
• Open “System Preferences”
• Open “Mail, Contacts & Calendars”
• Click on the + to add a new account
• Choose “Add another account”
• Choose “Add a CardDAV account”
• Enter your Gmail / Apps credentials and google.com as the Server Address

Re-open the Contacts app and after the initial synchronization…. success! You may now happily use your Google contacts with the native OSX productivity and messaging apps.

Till next time…

Restoring default config on iPhone MobileTerminal.

I see this issue/question posted quite a bit, and after helping several people on various forums… I thought this might help others too.

If you’ve used MobileTerminal on your jailbroken iPhone, then you should be aware of the customization possible. More specifically: customization relating to the command shortcut menu. While customizing this and other menus, it’s very easy to accidentally wipe out an entire submenu! The best example I can think of would be picking say the “ls” submenu, and then accidentally hitting off on the submenu instead of the right arrow to modify it.

Another common menu to wipe out is the “misc” menu. Never fear though, you can still access the configuration menu by taping the AT&T or iPod logo in the upper left corner.

See the below screen shot if I was confusing:

At this time, MobileTerminal doesn’t have a graphical method to restore defaults. The quickest way out of this mess is to open MobileTerminal and issue the following command:

rm -rf /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.mobileterminal.* The case is sensitive, so type that in exactly as posted.

Restart MobileTerminal and you should be good to go. Consequently, that’s what you’d also want to backup if you were about to blow away your iPhone and wanted to keep your tricked out MobileTerminal preferences.

Till next time…