RE: My Mac Apple-Calendar went berserk-I need help! since it was closed so I made a new thread to ask. Do I assume Apple never fixed this issue? :(
Thank you for reading and hopefully answering. :)
Don’t know about Sequoia having fixed the bug. I am not about to test it either, because I don’t want to mess up my calendar any further. Also, I have long since moved from Apple’s Calendar, to BusyCal, which is a much better product anyway, and has good customer service, mostly due to being a somewhat smaller company (than Apple), and they need to provide good customer service, to keep their business running (unlike Apple).
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How does BusyCal work? Does it take over Finder’s local sync to use BusyCal instead of Apple’s?
Ok, I have to say, BusyCal achieves syncing via cloud sync only, as is the case with Apple Calendar (assuming the Apple local-sync function has not yet been fixed). I have abandoned syncing my Calendar (with BusyCal) altogether, and have my Calendar (BusyCal) on one Mac only. :: I am still not ready at this point to commit to cloud syncing. Sorry, this does not really help your local-syncing concerns.
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Yeah, I don’t do cloud syncing. Dang it!
No, iOS local Calendar USB syncing is not fixed in the Sequoia release.
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This doesn’t bode well. I tried to move Contacts & Calendar iTunes syncing from USB to iClod and while Contacts worked, Calendar didn’t and I ended up with four copies of every calendar event on my iMac, iPhone and both iPads. After disabling Calendar syncing with iClod, it took me a week to fix everything on my iMac before I synced it with my 3 iDevices using iTunes via USB and was able to get them fixed. I’m afraid to try to sync my iMac & iDevices to Calendar in iClod and have to redo everything. I wonder if using WiFi for local syncing via iTunes would work.
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It didn’t last time I tried, but that has been awhile. Then it behaved the same as a USB sync.
ie. “four copies of every calendar event”
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I can see how problems in switching from a USB sync to an iCloud sync could cause duplicates, but if the goal is to end up with an iCloud sync (which seems to be the only actually supported method and does work fine for most people), what I would have done in your situation is completely shut off all the USB syncing and focused on getting everything right in iCloud.
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Adam, I tried that but no matter what I did, iClod kept putting multiple copies of every event on my iMac, iPhone, and both iPads instead of actually syncing only the different items to Calendar on each device. My iMac is my master Calendar entry device so I thought it’s changed items would be added to the iClod Calendar and then that Calendar would just update the calendars on the phone & pads. But it didn’t. While the Calendar on iClod only showed 1set of events, it acted as if there were 4 sets to be put on the iMac & iDevices. So I disabled syncing with it, corrected everything on Calendar on my iMac, then re-enabled syncing with iTunes via USB, and fortunately the Calendar data on my iDevices was replaced with that from the iMac and I was back to 1 entry per event instead of 4.
Did you remove all calendar and contact data from every device other than your Mac before setting them up to sync with iCloud? And did you check Calendar and Contacts on iCloud.com itself to see what was there after syncing the Mac? I also would do all the devices one at a time rather than all at once.
FWIW, that is not actually the behavior of the RC Sequoia. But it is still very much broken. For a few betas prior to the RC, it has seemed to alternate between the mass duplications, and not visibly altering either Calendar at all, so when it was “done” both the macOS Calendar and the iOS Calendar would have events that the other did not. There were versions when it warned one Calendar was going to overwrite hundreds of events in another, but when given permission, there was no apparent change in either.
I guess, optimistically, this could indicate Apple is actually working on the code? I haven’t actually believed that for some time.
Based on the article title, it sounds like USB syncing does not work at all, but reading the comments it sounds isolated to a Calendar issue with iCloud? I hope USB syncing and backing up works in general, without involving iCloud.
I haven’t tried Sequoia, but across multiple iOS devices and many macOS and iOS versions on multiple Macs with USB syncing (no iCloud), I’ve only had success syncing all Calendar entries from the Mac to iOS. If I choose an option to sync less of the Mac’s Calendar to iOS, such as the last 30 days, nothing syncs at all.
I wish there was a solution for this, but nothing has worked. I’ve tried the option to replace all Calendar content on iOS, which doesn’t have any content, but syncing doesn’t finish I think, unless I sync all Calendar entries.
I sync Calendar wireless with iCloud and for me that works just fine. It works in fact a whole lot better than the sync to Google Calendar that my work relies on.
But my wife, who doesn’t want to use iCloud for calendar and instead has tried by now for years to get her Mac Calendar and her iPhone Calendar to sync has not been successful. She usually ends up with a whole bunch of duplicate events or changes not syncing both ways. She has reached the point where she just gave up and now resorts to only using the iPhone for calendar. Quite sad if you ask me.
This has persisted across various versions of macOS and iOS including instances where both are on the absolute latest and greatest with every patch and patch to the last patch installed. It has persisted across different iPhones and Macs including after having done a clean install and starting from scratch. The issue also shows both over USB and wifi sync, completely regardless of how the actual connection is made.
My conclusion from her entire experience here has been that Apple has decided (while not telling customers about it) that syncing Calendar between Mac and iPhone, in spite of that having worked just fine for years before, is by now flat out broken, that they will not spend any effort fixing it, and that if you still want to sync you are forced to go iCloud, period, end of discussion. Suck on it, luddites. Now they’re certainly in their right to do that, they get to choose how they spend their engineering $. A spec of decency, however, would have dictated though to at least find the stones to tell your customers that this is how it’s going to be so they’ll know they will have to find other ways to adapt. But apparently, big Apple doesn’t quite have the same vigor in the decency department as they do in their marketing.
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The latest update is back to mass duplication with a twist. It created exact copies of my three calendars from my iPad onto my Mac Studio, while the three calendars it should have “synced” with on my Mac, went into mass duplication mode, ending up with six useless calendars on my Mac. The calendars on the iPad did not appear to be changed.
Thank you Adam for urging caution in upgrading to Sequoia. I have not had any syncing issues with Calendar either via wireless or USB. I might be just fortunate.
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No, because when two devices SYNC the data on each device is compared and any newer data on each device is sent to the other device. Since I do ALL calendar entries solely on my iMac, it had the newest data and iCloud should have deleted any duplicate older events from its data base. Then when I synced an iDevice, the iCloud data would have any newer events and the iDevice should add those replacing any duplicates.
I had done Contacts FIRST and it didn’t just add duplicate contacts, but only those NOT already on the iMac and iDevices.
Yes, I did them one-at-a-time but didn’t discover the problem until later. Apparently iCloud Calendar does NOT sync but only COPIES its events to the iMac/iDevice(s).
So, IF I understand you correctly, my FIRST step before doing a Calendar sync with iCloud is to remove all Calendar events from iCloud then 2. enable the calendar sync on my iMac, and everything in Calendar on the iMac will be copied to iCloud. 3. After confirming I disable calendar sync on my iMac. The I do the same steps with each iDevice: 1. Erase iDevice calendar, 2. enable iCloud calendar sync, 3. sync iDevice to iCloud, 4. Confirm everything is correct, & 5. disable calendar sync on iDevice. Repeat iDevice steps 1 through 5 for each iDevice. When I add/change an event on the iMac, I then start again by erasing Calendar in iCloud so it won’t copy its contents on to the iMac thus giving me duplicates. It seems to me that direct syncing between iMac and iDevices using either an USB cable or WiFi connection via iTunes is a faster way to go.
You are syncing locally (USB, W-Fi) with Sequoia? I don’t know anyone who has been successful, post-Monterey. Would you mind sharing hardware, (Mac, iPhone, iPad models), macOS and iOS version, ports (USB-A, USB-C, Thunderbolt), etc.?
Thanks.
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The main thing that makes no sense to me is disabling sync after setting up each time (step 3 for the Mac, step 5 for each device). Also, I have no idea why you’d do this:
When I add/change an event on the iMac, I then start again by erasing Calendar in iCloud so it won’t copy its contents on to the iMac thus giving me duplicates.
Don’t do that—I guarantee you’ll regret it.
You’ve gotten things in a tizzy, so the goal is to clean out the iCloud side of things, sync to iCloud with the primary device that has good data and confirm that. Don’t let anything else into the mix until you’re sure that’s working fine. Then, from the iPhone, erase everything local. Make sure there are no calendar events or contacts anywhere in evidence. Then turn on iCloud syncing and let it bring data down. Confirm that works too, in both directions, with changes from the Mac being reflected on the iPhone and changes on the iPhone being reflected on the Mac. Only then do you repeat the process with each subsequent device, clearing it out and turning on iCloud syncing once that’s done. Once it’s all set up, don’t delete or disable anything in regular usage.
Frankly, I also strongly recommend not connecting the iOS devices to the Mac via USB for anything. Alongside all the issues that people are complaining about here, mixing local and Internet syncing and backup is a recipe for problems. I have long recommended picking one and sticking with it, and I personally haven’t used USB syncing in years because iCloud syncing was faster and easier.
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