Rediscovering CardDAV
Jan-Piet Men (2020, via Hacker News):
I can no longer sync iOS’ Contacts with my macOS Catalina’s Finder (the iOS sync portion of iTunes is now built into the Finder in macOS Catalina); the OS insists I’ve iCloud configured for Contacts which I do not.
[…]
I was spilling my sorrows on Christoph who simply said he avoids all those issues by using CardDAV. I slapped my forehead: I’ve been using CalDAV for years, for synchronizing two calendars across devices: my own calendar across two Macs, an iPad, and an iPhone, and the family calendar across the family’s devices. How could I have forgotten about CardDAV?
[…]
I then created a Baïkal address book for myself, set up macOS and an iPhone to use that, and created a pseudo person’s entry on the Mac and another on iOS, and experimented a bit with how long it takes either side to sync, etc. As soon as I was satisfied I copy/pasted all contacts from macOS’ internal address book to its CardDAV store.
[…]
CardDAVMATE is an Open Source CardDAV web client which is nice to use for editing some of the more esoteric (read: not available in the GUIs) vCard attributes, in particular those for spouse and the social profiles.
Previously:
- Immich
- CardDAV at FastMail
- Using ownCloud for Contacts and Calendar Syncing
- Personal Contacts and Calendar Syncing
3 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Nextcloud is a nightmare and way too heavy. I used both and I prefer and trust Baikal way more - it's incredibly lightweight and works beautifully in every device. The hardest part is setting up a web client, but InfCloud is pretty usable and my choice when I need to access from a computer that's not mine, which is pretty rare.
"Radicale" for me, in the past; things are only slightly more complex now with the TLS requirements (which, TBF, are an unfortunate development for anyone securely using a VPN, but never mind that, it's possible). Once I migrate to my cyrus server completely, though, I'll be using its in-box CALDAV/CARDDAV, just like FastMail.
More people should do this. Privacy, yes, but also decentralisation. Apple and Google can only abuse you if you let them. And macOS provides an excellent substrate on which to do this, being UNIX and all that jazz, but actually virtualisation is now more accessible and easier now than ever, especially important on Apple Silicon, and while there will always be a penalty, it is low enough now that it doesn't matter especially if you use memory ballooning. I had wanted to use Apple's own stack, but it's broken in UTM, so I am using qemu, and it's working beautifully. Do it, seriously.
